A fragment of amber revealed its secrets to scientists.
An unexpected discovery, made in the Dominican Republic.
Inside the fossil resin hid a flowering plant of an unknown species as well as a parasitic wasp, also part of a new species, reports Science Alert, which reports information from the journal Historical Biology.
The plant would be a small female flower, with a long stem.
It would be part of the Euphorbiaceae, which includes 300 different genera.
This is the first fossil ever recorded.
Named Plukenatia minima, this species is estimated to be 30 million years old.
👇🏽 A newly-described plant is encased in a 30-million-year-old amber tomb with a wasp.
Familiar #JurassicPark fans?đź‘€
The author of this study, George Poinar Jr. @OregonState popularized the idea of ​​extracting DNA from insects fossilized in amberhttps://t.co/wsGorZLKJC #SciArt pic.twitter.com/37h1yyKEa1
— Taylor&Francis News (@tandfnewsroom) July 15, 2022
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An aggressive wasp
In addition, the amber fragment contained a wasp and a developing fly larva.
Named Hambletonia dominicana, the parasitic wasp had already been studied in 2020. From the Encyrtidae family, it would be a particularly formidable and aggressive species.
An ecological microcosm was actually in the middle of this fragment of amber.
According to the scientists, the wasp could have acted as pollinators for this fossilized plant, as is the case today with several of its modern species.
The insect could also have used the plant to lay an egg which, once hatched, could have fed on the fly larvae.
A virtuous circle of several million years therefore.
Science
100 million year old fossilized flower discovered by researchers
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