Living Fossil Ant Discovered

The latest living fossil is a long-lost ant from the late Cretaceous: Martialis heureka. The newly discovered species is directly descended from a previously unknown branch of Earth’s most abundant animal family.

Discovered outside the Amazon jungle city of Manaus, only three specimens of M. heureka have been identified, according to the UK’s Telegraphand Wired Science.

“I consider this a sensational discovery,” said Arizona State University entomologist Bert Hoelldobler, who was not involved in the findings. “This newly discovered ant genus, belonging to a newly established ant subfamily, represents the very basis of ant evolution.”

Manfred Verhaagh of Germany’s Museum of Natural History found the first two specimens but they dried and crumbled before full descriptions. It took three years to find the ant again.

The University of Texas has announced that biologist Christian Rabeling discovered the new species of blind, subterranean, predatory ant in the Amazon rainforest, which is likely a descendant of the very first ants to evolve, Xinhua reported. Rabeling was able to “re-discover” them, so to speak, and thus shares full discovery of them because his specimen could be studied fully.

The new ant is named Martialis heureka, which translates roughly to “ant from Mars,” because the ant has a combination of characteristics never before recorded. It is adapted for dwelling in the soil, is two to three millimeters long, pale, and has no eyes and large mandibles, which Rabeling and colleagues suspect it uses to capture prey.

The ant also belongs to its own new subfamily, one of 21 subfamilies in ants. This is the first time that a new subfamily of ants with living species has been discovered since 1923 (other new subfamilies have been discovered from fossil ants).

Rabeling says his discovery will help biologists better understand the biodiversity and evolution of ants, which are abundant and ecologically important insects.

“This discovery hints at a wealth of species, possibly of great evolutionary importance, still hidden in the soils of the remaining rainforests,” writes Rabeling and his co-authors in a paper reporting their discovery this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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