Today, ants live only in mountainous regions. At the same time, six of their modern species were known before the study.
Russian scientists found in St. Petersburg State University the remains of the most ancient ant of the genus Manica. They were found in Baltic amber. This was reported by the press service of the institution, TASS wrote.
“Scientists of St. Petersburg University found in a piece of amber in Kaliningrad an ant of the genus Manica, which was previously found only in the mountains of Europe, the Caucasus, North America and Japan. The age of the find, according to scientists, is about 33.9-37.8 million years old – it is the oldest and the first known fossil species of this genus,” the statement said.
In general, the history of the existence of such insects reaches about 40 million years.
It is believed that the genus Manica originated in North America, because it was connected to Eurasia by land corridors during the Eocene. Thus, one of the ancestors of ants came from America to Asia, where he formed the modern species Manica yessensis, which now lives in the mountains of Japan.
“The species we described – Manica andrannae – can be considered with high probability to be the ancestor of some modern taxa of ants from the largest subfamily Myrmicinae. This is the first ancient finding of this genus in the fossil state and the first to be found in Europe,” the scientists added.
Recall that the early Lithuanian photographer Eugenijus Kavaliauskas took an ultra-close shot of an ant’s snout, which looks like a frame from a horror movie.
Scientists have counted the number of ants on Earth
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Source: korrespondent
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