Researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Colorado State University have found the world’s oldest soldier ant, in a 35-million-year-old block of Baltic amber, evidence that it was once found in Europe.
Soldier ants are aggressive insects now common in Africa and South America, however The newly discovered discovery reveals to researchers that this insect once lived in Europe. The researchers They were very surprised by this discovery, because until now they did not think that they had gone to this continent.
Incidentally, the find has been kept at Harvard University since the 1930s, but Christine Suciak, a faculty member at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, believes the specimen was previously classified as the wrong species of ant. The scientist was studying insect fossils for a project when he examined one such lump of amber under a microscope and was shocked by what he saw.
The find was then checked by another scientist to ensure that they had indeed found a military ant. The research team named the ant Dissimulodorylus Perseus in honor of the Greek mythological figure Perseus, who defeated Medusa without being seen. This discovery sheds light on the evolution of ants and the location of different ant species.
