An exquisitely-preserved moment of prehistoric ecology has seen the discovery of a new plant, a wasp, and a fly larva.
George Poinar, Jr., the entomologist who made this discovery, is credited with making the image of an insect trapped in amberTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkia is credited with making the image of an insect trapped in amberTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkia is credited with making the image of an insect The premise of the movie was inspired by his work.
The first fossil record of the plant Plukenetia was found on Hispaniola.
The flowers of members of the family are rare. I only found one fossil from Tennessee.
Scientists think the Dominican amber is from a tree that used to grow in a tropical forest.
George Poinar, Jr. is a historical biology professor.
It was mined from the mountain range.
There is a debate over the age of Dominican amber fossils, with differing theories about the age of the fossils.
The amber may have been formed around 20-15 million years ago, according to some.
A date of 45 to 30 million years ago is suggested by the presence of coccoliths.
This is even more complicated because the amber was redeposited into the rock after being sullied. The amber found in Puerto Rico and Jamaica are from the same time period as the other ambers.
The specimen is 30 million years old, according to him.
Poinar thinks that the fossil shows a new plant species as well as a whole ecology.
It's possible that this wasp played a role in the pollination of modern members of the Euphorbia genera.
The Hambletonia dominicana, discovered and named by Poinar in 2020, is an encyrtid wasp, a group of parasites known for laying their offspring with the eggs or larvae of smaller insects.
Poinar noticed a tiny gnat inside one of the flower's developing seeds and the damage it causes to the ovary capsule.
He believes the wasp could have been attracted to the flower to lay an egg that would have killed the gnats.
The wasp's plot was disrupted when a blob of sticky resin suddenly froze the organisms in the tableau they've been stuck in for millions of years.
The wasp's "dancing" and the flower's "elegant curves" reminded Poinar of art movements of the 20th century.
Everyone has their own way of interpreting visual images in the natural world according to Poinar.
An organisms can be described and then stored away in a hierarchy.
Fossil studies tend to focus on individual organisms and their place in the tree of life, and it is rare to find complete specimen of multispecies interaction.
In many cases, unrelated organisms become entombed together in amber.
In this case, the wasp was attracted to the flower by either trying to deposit an egg on the capsule that contains the fly larva, or by the fact that it was a flower.
The paper was published in a scientific journal.
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