An international team led by Chinese scientists discovered a rare piece of amber wrapped in a prehistoric marine animal called ammonite. This is the first time paleontologists have found such extinct "squid relatives" in amber, providing valuable evidence for humans to better understand amber formation and past ecosystems.
Researchers at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutions reported in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences on the 13th that the Burmese amber formed in the middle of the Cretaceous period weighed about 6 grams, was 33 mm long, 9.5 mm wide and 29 mm high, and wrapped at least 40 animal individuals. In addition to ammonites, there are also a variety of marine gastropods, intertidal and other foot animals, as well as land animals such as mites, spiders, and cockroaches.
Amber is a fossil of a plant resin formed by long-term geological processes, often containing well-preserved terrestrial organisms, but rarely preserving aquatic organisms, especially marine life.
The researchers used X-ray microcomputed tomography to analyze ammonites in amber and obtained high-resolution three-dimensional images visible at sutures, which are an important feature to identify ammonites.
Studies have shown that the soft body of the ammonite in amber has been lost, and the shell is damaged, and the interior is filled with fine sand particles, indicating that the ammonite has died before being wrapped, and its shell may have been washed to the shore by the waves and then wrapped in a lump of resin. The researchers speculated that the amber might have come from a forest near the coast.
While the age of the amber is still controversial, the presence of ammonite suggests that the amber may have been around 100 million years old.
(Xinhua News Agency)