99 Million Year Old Beetle

99 Million Year Old Beetle

100 million years ago, a tiny beetle flew into a coniferous tree and was overcome in its resin. The resin fossilized into amber and encased the beetle.

Machael Caterino, director of the Clemson University Arthropod Collection, said, “This is an extraordinary 99 million-year-old fossil in Burmese amber. We can see all the details of the external sculpturing of the wing covers and the head. We can see the mouth parts, which enable us to predict that this was a predator much like its modern relatives.”

This ancient insect is art of the Histeridae family of beetles, which still thrive today with more than 4,000 species.

Caterino co-authored a research article with colleges from Germany’s Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History about the discovery and was published in the journal Zootaxa.