Amber found on the Baltic coast.
In Baltic amber the scientists stumbled upon the traces of a unique scene: an ancient insect managed to escape from the resin captivity by jumping out of his exoskeleton.
On opening tells Gizmag, details reported in the journal Fungal Biology.
The escape happened around 50 million years ago. Beetle, similar to modern stick insects, afraid of the falling on him drops of resin or predator. In the amber also stuck a mushroom that could attract the attention of insect and larger animal.
“Judging by what we see in fossils, some kind of animal — maybe a rodent took a bite out of a mushroom that grew at the roots of the tree. The insect was about to eat a mushroom. And then, the beetle literally jumped out of his skin and ran away, and tree SAP covered the abandoned exoskeleton, as well as the hairs from the skin of a rodent,” — said paleontologist George Poinar (George Poinar, Jr).
According to him, fiber exoskeleton clearly indicate that the owner jumped out, not just left unnecessary. This fact helped to reconstruct the picture of the incident.
As noted, the amber found in the Baltic sea. The insect, the traces of which are found in the stone, belongs to the order of stick insects (Phasmatodea). For the purpose of camouflage, they disguise themselves as leaves and branches, and before reaching the adult stage, repeatedly dropping the “skin” (exoskeleton).
In 2015, Poinar found in Dominican amber, 20 million a flea with the causative agent of “black death”. This microorganism is responsible for one of the most deadly epidemics in history — the plague of the fourteenth century.
