Authors
Daran Zheng, Su-Chin Chang, Vincent Perrichot, Suryendu Dutta, Arka Rudra, Lin Mu, Ulysses Thomson, Sha Li, Qi Zhang, Qingqing Zhang, Jean Wong, Jun Wang, He Wang, Yan Fang, Haichun Zhang, Bo Wang
Publication date
2018/8/9
Journal
Nature communications
Volume
9
Issue
1
Pages
3170
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK
Description
Insect faunas are extremely rare near the latest Cretaceous with a 24-million-year gap spanning from the early Campanian to the early Eocene. Here, we report a unique amber biota from the Upper Cretaceous (uppermost Campanian ~72.1 Ma) of Tilin, central Myanmar. The chemical composition of Tilin amber suggests a tree source among conifers, indicating that gymnosperms were still abundant in the latest Campanian equatorial forests. Eight orders and 12 families of insects have been found in Tilin amber so far, making it the latest known diverse insect assemblage in the Mesozoic. The presence of ants of the extant subfamilies Dolichoderinae and Ponerinae supports that tropical forests were the cradle for the diversification of crown-group ants, and suggests that the turnover from stem groups to crown groups had already begun at ~72.1 Ma. Tilin amber biota fills a critical insect faunal gap and provides a …
Total citations
20182019202020212022202320241122519311512
Scholar articles
D Zheng, SC Chang, V Perrichot, S Dutta, A Rudra… - Nature communications, 2018