16 million year old tardigrade trapped in amber, a “once in a generation” discovery

A long, long time ago, a tiny animal found its end in a sticky tree resin trap. Sixteen million years later, this tiny tardigrade fossil was discovered in Dominican amber. He is now a sort of scientific celebrity. Talk about a sparkle.

The fossil tardigrade is remarkable for its rarity and for the fact that it is a new species and a new genus.

Tardigrades are known as “water bears” because of their appearance when viewed under a microscope (this is what they look like when they walk). They are almost invincible, able to survive exposure to space and even being shot from a gas gun (towards a point).

While the micro-fossil animal looked like a modern tardigrade on the outside, researchers were also able to examine its insides. “Of all the currently known and officially named fossils of tardigrade amber (three to date, including this Dominican amber fossil), this is the first fossil in which we have been able to visualize its internal structure (i.e. ie foregut), ”Marc Mapalo, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, told me. Mapalo is the lead author of an article on the discovery published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The tardigrade was so different from known specimens that it gained its own genus and the name Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus.

“The discovery of a fossil tardigrade is truly a once-in-a-generation event,” co-author Phil Barden said in a statement from the New Jersey Institute of Technology on Tuesday. Barden’s lab found the fossil.

Spotting a young tardigrade half a millimeter long in ancient amber is no easy task. “At first I thought it was an artifact in the amber – a crack or a crack that looked a lot like a tardigrade,” Barden said. The little claws warned him of what it really was.

Humans can buy Tardigrade plush toys, T-shirts with Tardigrade crest, and even Tardigrade jewelry. “As microorganisms, they live on a scale that’s hard to understand, but they have these funny little paws and cute, remarkable faces that somehow seem familiar, like the bears they are sometimes named after,” Barden said. .

While more tardigrade fossils can still be found in other amber samples, it is a difficult mission. He considers the discovery “enough late luck for a career”.

Mapalo hopes the discovery will encourage researchers to be careful when studying amber and to keep their eyes peeled for the creatures. Fossilized animals can tell us how tardigrades have changed over time. There is still a lot to learn about these mighty water bears, ancient and modern.