100m-year-old mosquitoes with a big bite
Print Edition
An international research team said yesterday it had found a new genus of mosquito-related ancient insects with a distinct elongated mouthpart more than half its body length in Cretaceous amber dating back about 100 million years.
The newly discovered genus, Burmopsyche, belonging to the family of Aneuretopsychidae, is about 7 millimeters long and looks like an enlarged mosquito, according to Wang Bo, team leader and a researcher of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
鈥淭he Burmopsyche has two pairs of wings, compared with only one with mosquitoes, and a super-long mouthpart of 3 to 4mm, or more than half of its body length,鈥 Wang said.
Mesozoic long-proboscid scorpionflies (Mesopsychoidea) provide important clues to ancient plant-pollinator interactions. The family Aneuretopsychidae is especially important because its mouthparts are vital to deciphering the early evolution of Mesopsychoidea and putatively the origin of fleas, according to the team of scientists from China, Russia, France and the United States.
鈥淭he morphology of animals is closely related to their living environment. The mouths and wings of modern mosquitoes are obviously different from those of the ancient Burmopsyche, which is likely to indicate that the external environment, such as the plants on which they feed, has changed greatly,鈥 Wang said. 鈥淭he research can thus provide valuable information about the environment in ancient times.鈥
The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.
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