Amber
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The latest amber time capsule discovery comes from Oregon State University researchers who have identified a completely new, previously unknown genus and species of flower dating back 100 million years to the mid-Cretaceous period.
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Scientists have successfully extracted DNA from insects trapped in amber – but any creatures you might revive from this would hail from the not-so-distant past of 2014. The study aims to work backwards to find the limits of DNA preservation.
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The oldest known animal sperm sample has been discovered, dating back 100 million years. Dozens of ostracods were found in a piece of amber with their “soft parts” out, and their giant sperm measuring around a third of the animals’ body length.
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Amber has offered us all kinds of fascinating insights about long-gone creatures that once inhabited the Earth. Joining them is a rare 99-million-year-old fossil that shows an enigmatic “hell ant” clamping down on its cockroach-like prey.
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Most fossils are just bones, but occasionally striking specimens turn up bearing skin or feathers, encased in gemstones, and even preserving traces of DNA against all odds. Here's a look at some of the most incredible fossil finds of recent years.
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Found preserved in 30-million-year-old amber, the "mold pig" is so different from anything else that it’s been placed in a new genus all of its own.
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ScienceAmber can be a veritable treasure trove of ancient animals and insects, but it most commonly captures creatures that lived in forests – understandable, given the stuff starts life as tree sap. But now researchers have found a piece of amber bearing a strange mix of land and sea-dwelling creatures.
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Scientist now have to reevaluate what they know – or thought they knew – about the evolution of millipedes due to a tiny, 8.2-mm member of the order Callipodida who got its many feet stuck in some tree resin, which turned up in Myanmar, 99 million years later, as a golden lump of amber.
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We've all heard about ancient insects getting preserved in amber (fossilized tree resin), with similarly-preserved items including dinosaur feathers, mammalian red blood cells and a bizarre spider. Now, for the first time, scientists have found an amber-encased prehistoric snake.
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ScienceScientists have discovered a brand new species of spider, with a feature that’s not normally seen in the creatures – a tail. If that’s making your skin crawl, take solace in the fact that the new arachnid, dubbed Chimerarachne, lived 100 million years ago and its remains were found trapped in amber.
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ScienceScientists have long suspected that ticks feasted on the blood of dinosaurs. Preserved in a 99 million-year-old chunk of amber lies a hard tick grasping the feather of a dinosaur, suggesting that the parasitic insects did indeed harbor a penchant for prehistoric plasma.
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There’s only so much palaeontologists can learn about prehistoric animals from fossilized bones, so on rare occasions when ancient soft tissues turn up, it’s worth taking note. Now a section of a dinosaur’s tail, complete with feathers, has been found trapped in a piece of amber.