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Researchers say the similarities between the newly discovered North Carolina ant and other preserved stalk ants are “remarkable” and their lifespans would have overlapped with the earliest living ants. is writing. The researchers also examined other ant fossils covering a history of about 100 million years.
Unlike most species on Earth, ants escaped extinction during the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction about 66 million years ago. During that period, up to 80 percent of plants and animals became extinct. However, the ants survived, and the stem ants appear to have coexisted with more modern types of ants, a phenomenon called “faunal alternation.”
These duplications also occurred among other animals, such as theropod dinosaurs, which are thought to have eventually been related to birds. But researchers note that in most faunal turnovers, the body structures of modern animals end up looking different from those of ancient animals.
This is not the case with ants, whose body structure has remained strikingly similar over the years. The similarities between extinct and modern ants suggest that their body structure “could persist despite changes in ecological niches or extinction,” the researchers wrote.
It is difficult to understand why ants experienced faunal turnover rather than extinction, and why stem ants went extinct while modern ants ultimately survived. However, other insects and arthropods have also experienced faunal turnover, leading researchers to hypothesize that faunal turnover may have occurred more frequently than mass extinctions of these organisms. ing. In any case, they write, ants appear to have had “determined longevity” over hundreds of millions of years.
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