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An incredible 99 million year old piece of amber contains several trapped marine gastropods, including an extinct ammonite, according to a new paper.
Amber is a fossilized tree resin, which sometimes preserves fragments of plant and animal matter, such as insects and feathers of birds. But in this case, scientists from China, the United Kingdom and the United States have discovered a rare example of marine animals trapped in amber. It is not only exciting to find the shell of an ammonite – an extinct mollusk generally considered only a footprint in the rock – but it also offers scientists another way to determine the date of creation of amber.
The specimen came from an amber mine in northern Myanmar, a region known for the diversity of species present in its amber deposits. It measures a little more than an inch long, a third of an inch wide and an inch high, and weighs up to six paper clips. At least 40 species of invertebrate arthropods living in forests have been trapped inside some of the hardened flesh, including mites, spiders, centipedes, cockroaches and Wasps. But it also contained at least four shells of marine snails above the ammonite.
The ammonites were a mollusk that probably died out during the event that ended the Cretaceous and killed the dinosaurs. They are prized for their beauty and value for science, as they are a good reference tool for determining the age of the rock in which they were found. It's a ubiquitous symbol for marine paleontology, and there's even a Pokemon named after them, Omanyte.
Researchers used an X-ray microscope to image ammonite inside amber. He appeared to be a juvenile with a shell diameter of 12 millimeters (a little less than a half-inch). The shell was partially damaged, implying that the creature had died before being included in amber, according to the document published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It was an exciting discovery. "My first thought when I saw this was," It's unreal, "Phil Barden, an assistant professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, told Bizmodo. "To see a trapped in amber, I was stunned." Scientists generally consider that the fossils of the Burma amber deposits date back 100 million years and the inclusion of ammonite helps clear any doubts that they might have had. said Barden. This also allows scientists to see the well-known ammonite in a new light.
How does a marine mollusk end up in amber trees? Well, that requires a lot of luck. As a general rule, insects are deposited in the resin (and there are many insect samples in amber), but something strange may happen. Previous research has shown that Burma's amber deposits come from coniferous forests, which can be found on the coasts. Maybe the shell sits on the sandy beach near a tree until the tree covers it with amber.
This specimen also leaves scientists dreaming of what might be hiding elsewhere in an amber mine. A bit of amber may have even preserved the soft tissues of ammonite. There is so much amber, containing so many specimens, and the shoreline is such a dynamic place that it is impossible to say what else we could find.
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