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The head, foot and peduncle of a tiny terrestrial snail have recently been discovered fossilized in an amber patch of 99 million years ago. Although the specimen is less than 0.2 inches in diameter, it offers incredible visibility into the lives of these unobtrusive creatures since the dinosaur era.
The snail was contained in a small piece of amber from northern Myanmar, also known as Burma. It was purchased from a private fossil collector in 2016 and includes the shell of a second, less well preserved snail.
While the vast majority of snail fossils retain only the shell, this discovery is the oldest example of soft tissue snails preserved in amber, according to the authors of one. article published this week in the newspaper Cretaceous research.
The work was led by Lida Xing, from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, who was also at the origin of discoveries of birds, rainforest frogs, a baby snake and even a feathered dinosaur tail in Burma's amber.
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This almost black almost black skull belongs to the most complete specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex presented in Europe, nicknamed Tristan Otto. This skeleton of scientific importance, but belonging to private interests, is preserved in the Museum für Naturkunde of Berlin, Germany, with about 170 of its 300 bones preserved. Discovered in 2010 in the famous Hell Creek formation of the Upper Cretaceous in Montana, the 12-meter-long fossil took four years to dig and prepare.
PHOTOGRAPH OF GERD LUDWIG
A rare beauty
Snails buried in amber are rare, "not to mention extraordinary snail specimens that have soft parts," says coauthor Jeffrey Stilwell, a paleontologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
"The resin of ancient trees has exceptional conservation potential, capturing the finest details of millions of years old fossil organisms in a perfect 3D space, to such an extent that they seem to have been trapped in the resin yesterday, "he says.
A three-dimensional reconstruction of the snail reveals more details about its shell and its soft tissues.
PHOTOGRAPH OF LIDA XING, CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF GEOSCIENCES, BEIJING
Snails with soft tissue have sometimes been found in amber elsewhere, but the new specimen is at least 70 million years older than the former record holder. It provides important new data on the rich biodiversity of tropical Cretaceous forest life.
The snail, which is now part of the Dexu Paleontology Institute's collection in Chaozhou, China, is likely related to modern cyclophorooid terrestrial snails found in tropical and subtropical environments. This superfamily of snails is known for its hard operculum, which serves as a lid or trapdoor when the snail withdraws into its shell. However, the fact that the specimen is tiny and that a juvenile has made it difficult to definitively confirm his identity, say the authors.
"It should be emphasized the recognition of such structures as an eye stalk or a possible operculum," says Ricardo Perez-de la Fuente, paleoentomologist of the Natural History Museum of the University of Barcelona. Oxford in the UK, who co-authored an article on ticks discovered last year amber.
"Such discoveries are very useful to complete reconstructions of the Cretaceous amber forests and open a rare window on 3D soft tissue preservation."
A better fossil record
The authors hypothesize that the incredible specimen was formed when a snail fell into the resin of a tree. The shell of the snail would have been quickly stifled by the sticky material, preventing the animal from retracting. The snail, they figured, would then have spread his fleshy body trying to break free, before becoming completely engulfed.
George Poinar, a paleobiologist from Oregon State University in Corvallis, describes the discovery as fascinating, but offers an alternative explanation as to how all the snail could have been preserved.
Poinar described snails aged 20 to 30 million years old with soft tissue found in the amber of the Dominican Republic. He argues that the distended soft-tissue shape suggests rather "that the snail was attacked by a predator that tore its flesh and then accidentally dropped it into the resin where it was left," says -he. "No predator wants resin for his dinner".
DINOSAURES 101
More than a thousand species of dinosaurs once roamed the Earth. Find out what were the biggest and the smallest, what the dinosaurs ate and how they behaved, as well as some surprising facts about their extinction.
No matter how this snail has been lost, this unique discovery adds to the growing collection of animals and plants described in Burma amber. Most of these species, which now number more than a thousand species, have been discovered over the past decade, said co-author Andrew Ross of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
"The diversity in Burmese amber is really phenomenal and … contains a mixture of extinct primitive forms and shapes similar to living relatives," he says. "It provides a wealth of information on animals that were previously known only by fossils in the rock."
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