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Of all the prehistoric creatures to find trapped in amber, we could never have expected a snail.
But this is exactly what paleontologists have discovered – they are so perfectly preserved that their shells have remained intact and prehistoric soft tissues have been observed for the first time. A second, less well preserved snail shell is also found in the same piece of amber.
Rooted in 99 million-year-old Amber from Myanmar, the snails are native to the Cretaceous, when some of the world's most beloved dinosaurs, such as T. rex, velociraptor and triceratops have walked the Earth.
Their morphology suggests that they are ancestors of the cyclophorid family of terrestrial snails. This does not make them the oldest snails ever found in amber, that would also place them among the oldest cyclophoroids found in Asia.
As you probably know, snails are extremely fragile. Their bodies are soft and squish, and their exoskeletons – also called their shells – are fragile.
Some have been preserved in the fossil record, but snails preserved in amber are exceptionally rare.
This piece, purchased from a private fossil collector in 2016, is 70 million years older than any other snail soft tissue identified to date. And it's quite exceptional – including the stem of the head, foot and eyes of a youngster.
"The resin of ancient trees has exceptional conservation potential, capturing the finest details of millions of years old fossil organisms in perfect 3D space – to such an extent that they seem to have been trapped in the resin yesterday, "said paleontologist Jeffrey Stilwell, of Monash University in Australia told John Pickrell to National Geographic.
It is difficult to identify with certainty if the snail is very young, although it has several morphological characteristics comparable to those observed in living and fossil Cyclophoridae species, such as a lid, a kind of "lid" that the snail uses to seal its shell.
What is perhaps even more interesting, is that the snail was probably still alive when it was wrapped in amber, its body stretched and warped, with a bubble of Air around his head.
"The soft parts of the snail are very stretched, and this could represent a last unsuccessful escape attempt," the researchers wrote in their article.
"Since the snail was apparently buried in the tree resin while it was alive, it could explain the pronounced distortion in the soft tissue preserved."
According to them, the likely sequence of events was that the tiny snail was crawling with his petarded eye stretched when the resin began to engulf him. He stretched himself to try to escape and it was at that moment that the resin flowed around his body.
Once trapped, the snail exuded air, probably a lung inside its shell, bubbling outward and hiding its head.
While this does not facilitate identification, the fact of the existence of this snail is an amazing addition to the incredible discoveries made in recent years in Myanmar since about 99 million years ago.
Previous discoveries include a dinosaur tail covered with delicate feathers, the first discovery; a really special arachnid with a long, whip-like tail; a tiny prehistoric "opposite bird" of a dead species with dinosaurs; the oldest known chameleon in the world; a "vampire ant" with a metal tip on the head; prehistoric frogs; and a baby snake.
The amber snail is now part of the Dexu Paleontology Institute collection in Chaozhou, China.
And the paper that describes it was published in the journal Cretaceous research.
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