Aptenoperissus burmanicus: A Wingless Parasitic Wasp Found in Cretaceous Burmese Amber

Bizzare wingless parasitic wasp from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber (Hymenoptera, Ceraphronoidea, Aptenoperissidae fam. nov.)

Authors:

Rasnitsyn et al

Abstract:

A strange wingless female parasitic wasp from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber is described as Aptenoperissus burmanicus sp. et gen. nov. in the new family Aptenoperissidae (Hymenoptera, Ceraphronoidea). Diagnostic characters of the female Aptenoperissus burmanicus sp. et gen. nov. include its wingless, streamlined and heavily sclerotized body lacking any apparent trace of a wasp waist, and geniculate antenna composed of a long, thin, stick-like scape, standard pedicel and 22 uniform flagellomeres. Also the body has 9 externally visible segments with no evidence of segment fusion implying the presence of a completely hidden segment. All tibiae have paired spurs and the hind femora are saltatory and incrassate. The double fore-tibial spur combined with unquestionable diagnostic features of Apocrita (primarily an internalized needle-like thin and acute ovipositor) suggest placement within the superfamily Ceraphronoidea s.str. with the Maimetshidae as a sister group of the crown Ceraphronoidea, composed of the Ceraphronidae, Megaspilidae, Stigmaphronidae, and Radiophronidae. The fossil is hypothesized to live semicryptically on the forest floor or tree trunk and to parasitize immature holometabolous insects. Diagnostic features of a respective male are suggested to test the hypothesized position of the new taxon.

Ants Domesticated Fungus for Farming 60 to 55 Million Years ago During the Paleogene

A group of South American ants has farmed fungi since shortly after the dinosaurs died out, according to an international research team including Smithsonian scientists. The genes of the ant farmers and their fungal crops reveal a surprisingly ancient history of mutual adaptations. This evolutionary give-and-take has led to some species--the leafcutter ants--developing industrial-scale farming that surpasses human agriculture in its efficiency.

The key chapters of the history of ant agriculture are written into the genes of both the insects and their crop fungi. A team including Jacobus Boomsma, research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and biology professor at the University of Copenhagen with his colleagues there, Sanne Nygaard and Guojie Zhang, looked at the genes of seven species of farming ants and their associated fungi to understand how the partnership developed. In a study published in Nature Communications, the scientists found that 55 to 60 million years ago ants belonging to the tribe Attini switched from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to subsistence farming of fungi that grew on decomposing, woody plant matter. The slow-growing fungi sustained tiny colonies of ants, but it was the first step toward agriculture on a much larger scale.

"The ants lost many genes when they committed to farming fungi," said Boomsma. This tied the fate of the ants to their food--with the insects depending on the fungi for nutrients, and the fungi increasing their likelihood of survival if they produced more nutritious crop. "It led to an evolutionary cascade of changes, unmatched by any other animal lineage studied so far."

The researchers found that around 25 million years ago one lineage of fungus-farming ants began cultivating fungi that produced tiny, protein-rich bulbs that the ants preferentially harvested. More nutritious food supported larger colonies, spurring even more advances in ant-fungus co-evolution until, 15 million years ago, the leafcutter ants emerged. Leafcutter ant species cut and sow their underground farms daily with fresh, green plant matter, cultivating a fully domesticated species of fungus on an industrial scale that can sustain colonies with up to millions of ants.

Domestication changed both partners in the relationship. Unlike its ancestors and present-day wild relatives, the leafcutter ants' fungus can no longer produce enzymes that digest woody plant matter, making it reliant on leafy greens brought in by the ants. In turn, the fungus produces fruiting bodies swollen with proteins essential for the ants' growth. The ants have evolved special enzymes to easily digest this superfood and cannot eat anything else. Unable to survive without each other, the symbiotic leafcutters and their fungi nonetheless form the largest colonies of any of the fungus-farming ants. They work together as the dominant herbivores in Neotropical forests.

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Camouflage Evolution in Albian/Cenomanian Cretacous Insect Preserved in Amber

Those who go to a masked ball consciously slip into a different role, in order to avoid being recognized so quickly. Insects were already doing something very similar in the Cretaceous: They cloaked themselves in pieces of plants, grains of sand, or the remains of their prey, in order, for example, to be invisible to predators. An international research team, with participation from the University of Bonn, has now investigated such "invisibility cloaks" encased in amber. The custom-tailored "costumes" also permit conclusions about the habitat at the time. The results have now been published in the journal "Science Advances".

The larva of the lacewing attacks a pseudoscorpion and uses its powerful mouthparts to suck it dry. The larva then puts the remains of the dead prey on its back. The outlines of the lacewing are now unrecognizable. It looks more like a dead pseudoscorpion. This camouflage protects the lacewing against being recognized by predators and at the same makes it easier to hunt its own prey. "With this 'disguise', the lacewing larva pretends to be someone completely different", says Prof. Dr. Jes Rust of the Steinmann-Institute of the University of Bonn. "Using the pieces of its prey, it even takes on the smell of the pseudoscorpion".

The scene plays out in the Cretaceous and is recorded as a "snapshot" in amber. A research team under Dr. Bo Wang of the State Key Laboratory of Paleobiology and Stratigraphy in Nanjing (China) worked together with paleontologists from the University of Bonn and other scientists from China, USA, France, and England to examine a total of 35 insects preserved in amber. With the aid of grains of sand, plant residue, wood fibers, dust, or even the lifeless shells of their victims, the larvae achieved camouflage to perfection. The amber samples come from Myanmar, France, and Lebanon.

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When Stone Beetles Tried to be Ants During the Eocene Paleogene

A new Eocene genus of ant-like stone beetles sheds new light on the evolution of Mastigini

Author:

Jałoszyński

Abstract:

Fossil Scydmaeninae beetles are exceptionally poorly known and those described usually lack important details to reliably analyze their phylogenetic relationships with extant taxa. Baltostigus n. gen. is the first extinct ant-like stone beetle taxon unambiguously assigned to the tribe Mastigini. It includes B. antennatus n. sp. (the type species of Baltostigus) and B. horribilis n. sp., from the lower to middle Eocene amber of Poland and Lithuania, respectively. Results of a phylogenetic analysis comprising morphological characters of all extant and extinct genera of the supertribe Mastigitae strongly support the placement of Baltostigus as a sister group to all remaining Mastigini. The new genus shows character states not known in any extant Mastigini: fully developed hind wings, prominent humeral calli, deep elytral punctures partly arranged in longitudinal rows and symmetrical aedeagal parameres. These features suggest that Mastigini might have evolved from forms morphologically similar to small-bodied extant Clidicini of the ‘Leptochromus lineage.’

Evidence of Worm and Insect Activity Across the Triassic-Jurassic Transition in East Greenland

EVIDENCE FOR INSECT AND ANNELID ACTIVITY ACROSS THE TRIASSIC-JURASSIC TRANSITION OF EAST GREENLAND

Authors:

STEINTHORSDOTTIR et al

Abstract:

During a study of macroflora from the Astartekløft locality in Jameson Land, East Greenland, endophytic insect ovipositions (egg traces) belonging to ichnogenus Paleoovoidus were recorded for the first time in ginkgoalean (Ginkgoites, Sphenobaiera, and Baiera) fossil leaves across the Triassic–Jurassic (Tr–J) transition (ca. 200 Ma). The ovipositions may have been produced by insects in the order Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) and are relatively more abundant before than after the Tr–J transition, possibly reflecting changes in plant-insect association. Fossil clitellate annelid (leech) cocoons were also discovered in a macerated sample from a single bed within the Tr–J transition. The cocoons belong to two species: Dictyothylakos pesslerae and Pilothylakos pilosus, extending the range of the latter genus from the Early Cretaceous to the Early Jurassic. This new evidence suggests that the ecosystem and food webs were profoundly affected by the environmental degradation surrounding the end-Triassic event (ETE), which was marked by faunal mass extinctions and floral turnover. Invertebrate ichno- and body fossils may add significantly to paleoenvironmental information provided by plant fossil assemblages, and therefore a protocol for recording evidence of invertebrate activity in paleobotanical research is suggested, including analyzing a standardized number of specimens for fossil traces and bulk maceration for discovery of invertebrate body fossils. More well-designed studies on Mesozoic plant-invertebrate associations are needed and will provide deeper knowledge about the structure and evolution of complex ecosystems.

The Horror! The Horror! Larval Cthulhu Found in Peruvian Amazon

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, an odd-looking caterpillar is doing its best to look like just another rain forest twig. But its four long tentacles are coiled, ready to respond to the first sign of danger.

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Dung Beetles Probably did NOT Feed on Dinosaur Droppings

The evolution of scarab beetles tracks the sequential rise of angiosperms and mammals

Authors:

Ahrens et al

Abstract:

Extant terrestrial biodiversity arguably is driven by the evolutionary success of angiosperm plants, but the evolutionary mechanisms and timescales of angiosperm-dependent radiations remain poorly understood. The Scarabaeoidea is a diverse lineage of predominantly plant- and dung-feeding beetles. Here, we present a phylogenetic analysis of Scarabaeoidea based on four DNA markers for a taxonomically comprehensive set of specimens and link it to recently described fossil evidence. The phylogeny strongly supports multiple origins of coprophagy, phytophagy and anthophagy. The ingroup-based fossil calibration of the tree widely confirmed a Jurassic origin of the Scarabaeoidea crown group. The crown groups of phytophagous lineages began to radiate first (Pleurostict scarabs: 108 Ma; Glaphyridae between 101 Ma), followed by the later diversification of coprophagous lineages (crown-group age Scarabaeinae: 76 Ma; Aphodiinae: 50 Ma). Pollen feeding arose even later, at maximally 62 Ma in the oldest anthophagous lineage. The clear time lag between the origins of herbivores and coprophages suggests an evolutionary path driven by the angiosperms that first favoured the herbivore fauna (mammals and insects) followed by the secondary radiation of the dung feeders. This finding makes it less likely that extant dung beetle lineages initially fed on dinosaur excrements, as often hypothesized.

How Will Global Warming Impact Common Pest Insects?

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that century-old museum specimens hold clues to how global climate change will affect a common insect pest that can weaken and kill trees – and the news is not good.

"Recent studies found that scale insect populations increase on oak and maple trees in warmer urban areas, which raises the possibility that these pests may also increase with global warming," says Dr. Elsa Youngsteadt, a research associate at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work.

"More scale insects would be a problem, since scales can weaken or kill the trees they live on," Youngsteadt says. "But cities are unique, so we wanted to know whether warming causes scale insect population explosions in rural forests, the way it does in cities."

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North Carolina State Unversity Creates Ultimate Bug: Cyborg Moths

In a lab at North Carolina State University, researchers have created moths that are a blend of wires and tissue. The eventual plan: to control a cyborg moth army. The biobots could be used to map ecosystems, spot survivors in search and rescue missions, or to carry out spy missions.

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Leaf Mining Insects Went Extinct at the KT/K-Pg Extinction in Montana

After the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period that triggered the dinosaurs' extinction and ushered in the Paleocene, leaf-mining insects in the western United States completely disappeared. Only a million years later, at Mexican Hat, in southeastern Montana, fossil leaves show diverse leaf-mining traces from new insects that were not present during the Cretaceous, according to paleontologists.

"Our results indicate both that leaf-mining diversity at Mexican Hat is even higher than previously recognized, and equally importantly, that none of the Mexican Hat mines can be linked back to the local Cretaceous mining fauna," said Michael Donovan, graduate student in geosciences, Penn State.

Insects that eat leaves produce very specific types of damage. One type is from leaf miners -- insect larvae that live in the leaves and tunnel for food, leaving distinctive feeding paths and patterns of droppings.

Donovan, Peter Wilf, professor of geosciences, Penn State, and colleagues looked at 1,073 leaf fossils from Mexican Hat for mines. They compared these with more than 9,000 leaves from the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago, from the Hell Creek Formation in southwestern North Dakota, and with more than 9,000 Paleocene leaves from the Fort Union Formation in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. The researchers present their results in today's (July 24) issue of PLOS ONE.

"We decided to focus on leaf miners because they are typically host specific, feeding on only a few plant species each," said Donovan. "Each miner also leaves an identifiable mining pattern."

The researchers found nine different mine-damage types at Mexican Hat attributable to the larvae of moths, wasps and flies, and six of these damage types were unique to the site.

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Introducing Megaloptera: A Bug Fit for a Nicoll Incident

oh, James!

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Evidence of Insect Herbivory From Middle Permian Antarctica

Animal–plant interactions in a Middle Permian permineralised peat of the Bainmedart Coal Measures, Prince Charles Mountains, Antarctica

Authors:

Slater et al

Abstract:

Evidence for invertebrate feeding on glossopterid gymnosperms is documented from Middle Permian silicified peats of the Prince Charles Mountains, Antarctica, in the form of coprolites occurring both free in the peat matrix and clustered within excavations in roots, aerial wood and leaves. Observations of coprolites in thin-sections of the peats and from scanning electron microscopy of examples extracted via bulk maceration reveal nine morphotypes distinguished by size, shape, surface texture and contents. These include coprolites with coarse plant debris, spirally ornamented coprolites, coprolites containing spore/pollen remains and fern sporangia, coprolites within Glossopteris leaves, an ellipsoidal morphotype within a fern sporangium, large isolated coprolites between matted leaves, clustered forms filling galleries inside Vertebraria roots and Australoxylon wood, forms with coarse indeterminate constituents and others with fungal contents. Other faunal evidence is limited to indeterminate arthropod exoskeleton fragments. Collectively, the coprolites within the permineralised peat from the Prince Charles Mountains document the presence of diverse feeding behaviours including stem feeding, sporangial feeding, palynivory, root feeding and mycophagy. The first evidence of invertebrate feeding traces in Vertebraria (glossopterid) roots is identified. These findings indicate that herbivory by invertebrates in the high-latitude Permian forest-mire ecosystems of Antarctica was more intense and diverse than previous studies have reported, and affected all parts of the Glossopteris plant, together with components of associated herbaceous taxa.

Jurassic Park Needs Parasites! Callovian Jurassic Fly Larva Volunteers!

Around 165 million years ago, a spectacular parasite was at home in the freshwater lakes of present-day Inner Mongolia (China): A fly larva with a thorax formed entirely like a sucking plate. With it, the animal could adhere to salamanders and suck their blood with its mouthparts formed like a sting. To date no insect is known that is equipped with a similar specialised design. The international scientific team is now presenting its findings in the journal "eLIFE".

The parasite, an elongate fly larva around two centimeters long, had undergone extreme changes over the course of evolution: The head is tiny in comparison to the body, tube-shaped with piercer-like mouthparts at the front. The mid-body (thorax) has been completely transformed underneath into a gigantic sucking plate; the hind-body (abdomen) has caterpillar-like legs. The international research team believes that this unusual animal is a parasite which lived in a landscape with volcanoes and lakes what is now northeastern China around 165 million years ago. In this fresh water habitat, the parasite crawled onto passing salamanders, attached itself with its sucking plate, and penetrated the thin skin of the amphibians in order to suck blood from them.

"The parasite lived the life of Reilly", says Prof. Jes Rust from the Steinmann Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Palaeontology of the University of Bonn. This is because there were many salamanders in the lakes, as fossil finds at the same location near Ningcheng in Inner Mongolia (China) have shown. "There scientists had also found around 300,000 diverse and exceptionally preserved fossil insects", reports the Chinese scientist Dr. Bo Wang, who is researching in palaeontology at the University of Bonn as a PostDoc with sponsorship provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The spectacular fly larva, which has received the scientific name of "Qiyia jurassica", however, was a quite unexpected find. "Qiyia" in Chinese means "bizarre"; "jurassica" refers to the Jurassic period to which the fossils belong.

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Mammals do not use RNAi to Fight Viruses?

Biologists have long wondered if mammals share the elegant system used by insects, bacteria and other invertebrates to defend against viral infection. Two back-to-back studies in the journal Science last year said the answer is yes, but a study just published in Cell Reports by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found the opposite.

In the Mount Sinai study, the results found that the defense system used by invertebrates — RNA interferences or RNAi — is not used by mammals as some had argued. RNAi are small molecules that attach to molecular scissors used by invertebrates to cut up invading viruses.

Mammals use a form of RNAi to fine-tune the expression of hundreds of genes that coordinate development in the womb, says the study's senior author, Benjamin tenOever, PhD, Fishberg Professor in the Department of Medicine and Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. But it has never been clear that adult mammals use RNAi the same way that plants and insects do, he says. "Mammals have cell machinery that looks capable of producing RNAi to fight virus, but we believe it only helps to produce different small RNA products called microRNAs, which are not antiviral," Dr. tenOever says.

The correct answer matters because RNAi is being studied as a potential basis for new kinds of drugs for the treatment of hemophilia, beta-thalassemia and many viral infections, says Dr. tenOever.

"We believe our results settle a longstanding debate about whether mammals, including humans and mice, fight viruses using RNAi, and the answer is good news," he says. "Drug designers interested in using RNAi to treat disease have worried that if RNAi is part of the mammalian response to viral infections, RNAi-based agents could compromise a human's immune response, producing unintended consequences. That is not a concern now, based on our findings."

Mammals are known to fend off viruses with a system based on interferons, signaling proteins made by immune cells that amplify the body's attack on invaders. The finding that mammals do not use RNAi to fight viruses suggests that RNAi-based drugs could augment the existing interferon response in mammals, Dr. tenOever says. "We could harness this potent RNAi viral-killing machine when natural human immunity isn't enough."

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The Robopocalypse Will be Cockroached

Insect Trace Herbivory Fossils

Observations of insects and their feeding marks on leaves in modern forests confirm indications from fossil leaf deposits that the diversity of chewing damage relates directly to diversity of the insect population that created it, according to an international team of researchers.

"The direct link between richness of leaf-chewing insects and their feeding damage across host plants in two tropical forests validates the underlying assumptions of many paleobiological studies that rely on damage-type richness as a means to infer changes in relative herbivore richness through time," the researchers report in today's (May 2) issue of a.

Studies of leaf chewing include observation of the leaves, but rarely include all the insects that actually made the marks. Mónica R. Carvalho, graduate student, Cornell University and Peter Wilf, professor of geosciences, Penn State, and colleagues looked at leaf predation in two tropical forests in Panama to test for a relationship between the richness of leaf-chewing insects and the leaf damage that the same insects induce.

Using Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute canopy-access cranes and working in the dark at almost 200 feet high in the treetops at new moon during two summers the researchers collected a total of 276 adult and immature leaf-chewing insects of 156 species. While the largest category of insect was beetles, leaf chewers among grasshoppers, stick insects and caterpillars, as well as a few ants, were also collected.

The team also collected fresh leaves of the insects' host plants and placed the insects in feeding experiment bags with these leaves. They allowed adult insects to feed for two to three days and immature stages to feed until full maturity when possible. The researchers then classified the damage to the leaves into categories, in the same way they catalog fossil leaf- chewing damage.

"This is the first attempt to compare leaf-chewing damage inflicted by many kinds of living insects on many kinds of plants throughout a large forest area, both to the culprit insects and to the leaf damage we see in the fossil record," said Carvalho. "We mounted 276 of the insects with their damaged leaves and deposited them in the STRI Insect Collection."

This collection is the only known vouchered collection of diverse, identified insects and their feeding damage on leaves of identified plant hosts.

The number of collected insect species correlated strongly with the number of damage types recorded in canopy leaves of 24 tree and liana species observed in the feeding experiments. This suggests that the number of types of damage seen in the fossil record is also related to the actual diversity of damage-making insects.

The researchers also compared the modern leaf data to fossil data from Colombia, Argentina, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. They found that the distribution of chewing marks was the same across both modern and ancient settings, showing a striking consistency in how insects have divided up their leaf resources since at least the end of the age of dinosaurs.

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Evidence of an Insect Skeletonized Fern From Upper Triassic China

Evidence for insect-mediated skeletonization on an extant fern family from the Upper Triassic of China

Authors:

Feng et al

Abstract:

Leaf skeletonization represents a distinctive form of insect feeding behavior. It commonly occurs in angiosperm leaves after their initial appearance during the Early Cretaceous. This type of feeding behavior rarely has been documented in pre-Mesozoic fossils. We describe the earliest evidence of insect-skeletonized leaves of Dictyophyllum nathorstii Zeiller, affiliated with the extant fern family Dipteridaceae in the Late Triassic Yipinglang flora from southwestern China. The skeletonization generally is located adjacent to the pinna rachilla of the distal free portion of the leaf. In the skeletonized area, the interveinal tissue is completely removed, exposing the pinna rachilla, pinnule midveins, and lateral veins. Most nonvascular tissue has been removed between the vascular bundles, the latter forming polygonal meshes of varying size. Our report of insect-mediated skeletonization of fern leaves from southwestern China fills a spatiotemporal gap in the published data on the paleogeographical distribution and stratigraphic occurrence of plant–arthropod associations, and indicates an antagonistic relationship between a fern host and its insect herbivore.

Insect & Crustacean Fauna From Miocene Neogene Iceland

Before the ‘Big Chill’: A preliminary overview of arthropods from the middle Miocene of Iceland (Insecta, Crustacea)

Authors:

Woppler et al

Abstract:

Well-preserved arthropods are reported from Miocene sedimentary rocks of the Skarðsströnd-Mókollsdalur (9–8 Ma) and Hreðavatn-Stafholt (7–6 Ma) Formations in Iceland. Fossil remains of terrestrial and/or freshwater animals have rarely been reported from the island before. Here we provide the first overview of the surprisingly rich Tortonian fauna from the Hrútagil locality and additional Messinian-aged trichopteran larval cases from the Stafholt locality. The Hrútagil fauna includes representatives of Cladocera (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) and seven insect orders, including several morphotypes of the orders Plecoptera, Dermaptera, Hemiptera (Cercopoidea, Aphididae), Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Trichoptera (Drusinae), and Diptera (Bibionidae). Previous studies on the Miocene of Iceland have been based principally on pollen analysis and the macrobotanical record with little attention paid to other aspects of the island’s palaeontology. This study provides the first comprehensive systematic description of Miocene arthropods from the northern North Atlantic region and offers the opportunity for a rare glimpse into the late Cenozoic arthropod fauna of Iceland in the context of transatlantic migration and palaeobiogeography and the onset of major global cooling events.

Pre Guadelupean Permian Extinction Lagerstätte Found in Antarctica

A high-latitude Gondwanan lagerstätte: The Permian permineralised peat biota of the Prince Charles Mountains, Antarctica

Authors:

Slater et al

Abstract:

The Toploje Member chert is a Roadian to Wordian autochthonous–parautochthonous silicified peat preserved within the Lambert Graben, East Antarctica. It preserves a remarkable sample of terrestrial life from high-latitude central Gondwana prior to the Capitanian mass extinction event from both mega- and microfossil evidence that includes cryptic components rarely seen in other fossil assemblages. The peat layer is dominated by glossopterid and cordaitalean gymnosperms and contains moderately common herbaceous lycophytes, together with a broad array of dispersed organs of ferns and other gymnosperms. Rare arthropod-plant and fungal-plant interactions are preserved in detail together with a plethora of fungal morphotypes, Peronosporomycetes, arthropod remains and a diverse coprolite assemblage. Comparisons to other Palaeozoic ecosystems show that the macroflora is of low diversity. The fungal and invertebrate-plant associations demonstrate that a multitude of ecological interactions were well developed by the Middle Permian in high-latitude forest mires that contributed to the dominant coal deposits of the Southern Hemisphere. Quantitative analysis of the constituents of the silicified peat and of macerals within adjacent coal seams reveals that whilst silicified peats provide an unparalleled sample of the organisms forming Permian coals, they do not necessarily reflect the volumetric proportions of constituents within the derived coal. The Toploje Member chert Lagerstätte provides a snapshot of a rapidly entombed mire climax ecosystem in the closing stages of the Palaeozoic, but prior to the onset of the protracted crisis that engulfed and overthrew these ecosystems at the close of the Permian.

Ectobius Genus Cockroaches Were Native to North America...during the Eocene Paleogene!

The cockroach in the genus Ectobius is a major textbook example of an invasive organism, and it is the most common cockroach inhabiting a large region from northernmost Europe to southernmost Africa.

Ectobius has a long fossil history in Europe, occurring in Baltic amber that is about 44 million years old, and its lineage was believed to have been exclusively from the Old World. However, a shocking new discovery has uprooted that view. In fact, it now appears that Ectobius may have originated in the New World.

Four ancient Ectobius species were recently discovered in the 49-million-year-old Green River Formation near Rifle, Colorado in deposits that are about five million years older than the Baltic amber. However, these cockroaches soon became extinct in North America. The cause for the extinction of Ectobius in North America in the dim past is unknown, but it evidently survived in the Old World, and western Europe in particular.

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