– The researcher Dr. Eduardo Faúndez from the University of Magallanes made the discovery when he was looking for fossil specimens, in a material extracted from the amber mines of Myanmar. According to the data, this insect existed 99 million years ago, the time in which it lived with the dinosaurs.
By Paula Viano Santana
Eduardo Foundez Peña – academic of the Magellan University (UMAG) – Answer the video call from Washington DC, United States. The Dr. in Entomology of the North Dakota State University is back in the North American country, this time, to review material from the Instituto Smithsonian to serve you in the execution of a academy facility projectawarded last year. Arthropods in southern Patagonia: climate change and socio-ecological relationships is its name, and seeks to reveal the most ancestral relationships of those insects popularly known as “bugs” that today inhabit the sub-Antarctic zone.
From there he tells us regarding a finding while he was in the middle of this investigation, which has just been described in a article published by Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments, an international peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the dissemination of high-quality original and multidisciplinary studies on the history of the Earth. The prolific Dr. Faúndez publishes once more, now together with two colleagues in a medium recognized by the prestigious editorial Springerand in the most productive line of research at UMAG (Antarctic and Subantarctic Sciences), to share new knowledge regarding the oldest big-eyed bug on the planet.
In the early 1900s, science found evidence of a fossil specimen in a deposit located in Colorado, USA, dating back 34 million years. A century later, Dr. Faúndez found a specimen in a 99-million-year-old mine.
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Dorsal view of the large-eyed bug specimen.
Faúndez wanted to look for ancestors of subantarctic bugs in the araucaria forests of Myanmar, formerly Burma, and for this he bought material discarded from the amber mines in that country. “It happens a lot that the amber from that area is sold for jewelry,” he explains, “but the one that has bugs or things like that, they practically throw it away, and sometimes they sell it in batches for Education. So, one buys a batch and does not know what is going to come”.
Why did you acquire waste from the former Burma? “Because 100 million years ago, the forests there were araucarias, similar to the ones we have here, so I was looking for those relationships, and suddenly I found something very strange in one of the samples. There I contacted the other specialists who work with this family, and between the three of us we came to the conclusion that, indeed, it was a bug from this family, and it was something very strange to have found it in those circumstances, ”he details. What caught his attention were “the eyes of the bug, which has very large eyes, which is characteristic of this family.”
What comes next, explains the biologist, is “to carry out a phylogenetic analysis to reconstruct the history of the entire family. I want to review the presence of this family in Chile (because) there are two well-known species and one doubtful. I also want to show the araucaria forests, to see if I can find any more ancient fossils that are related to this one”. Asked regarding the final destination of this fossil, the researcher responded “for things in life, now it will be in the collection of the Institute of Patagonia” of the University of Magallanes.
