A small team of scientists from several countries has identified the oldest known example of a type of mite fossil . The work, which has been published in the journal Biology Letters , exposes how they obtained the piece of amber with an ant trapped inside to which a mite was attached.
The discovered fossil is of a mesostigma, a very small type of mite, without eyes and with great speed of movement. Although they usually feed on animals smaller than themselves, they can also pass larger insects or even small vertebrates. This mite in question is clearly attached to the head of the ant, but it is impossible to determine if it was feeding on the ant or simply ended up hooked on it as it moved somewhere, leaving the two united for posterity in the resin. .
The piece of amber, from approximately 45 million years ago , thus shows the presence of the oldest mite fossil of its type. The fact of having found the mite together with the ant also offers valuable information about how the mites evolved to this day, since nowadays, they attach so much to bees, ants or other animals to feed on them.
The fossil was found in the personal collection of German paleontologist and arachnologist Jöerg Wunderlich and, according to the researchers, makes us imagine a possible parasitic relationship between mesostigmates and small insects such as ants and bees 50 million years ago.
