Hell ants from the Cretaceous period, found in amber, about 99 million years ago

Not long ago, when a scientist was studying amber fossils, they found an ant that was hunting in an amber. This ant is not small. It is an extinct ancient species. Its name is "Hell Ant". It has a time of about 99 million years, but it is not the ancestor of modern ants. The animal it was preying at that time was probably the ancestor of the current cockroach. At this moment, it happened to be wrapped in resin, forming a precious fossil.

Hell ants may be unfamiliar to everyone. It is a small insect that lived in the Cretaceous period. It has an extremely fierce personality. When catching prey, it can easily grasp it with its sickle-shaped jaws. Scientists have found in deeper research that the hell ant is not the ancestor of modern ants. It appeared much earlier than the ancestors of modern ants. The appearance of hell ants is very unique, especially its special jaw All known ants are different. What the hell ants finally evolved into, or has become extinct, requires further research and verification.

Having said that, some people may be curious. Since hell ants are not the ancestors of modern ants, who are the ancestors of modern ants? A biologist from the United States discovered a very ancient offspring of ants in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil in 2008. Its whole body is golden yellow. It is very interesting that biologists found that it has many characteristics that modern ants do not have. It seems that it does not come from this planet, hence the name "Mars ant".

By studying DNA, it was found that this Martian ant came from about 120 million years ago and evolved from a branch of wasps, which became the first members of ants. It's like humans and chimpanzees once had a common ancestor.

Martian ants live in the soil all their lives, so it is extremely difficult for humans to find its existence. The body length of Martian ants is only 0.2-0.3 centimeters. Because they live in the soil without the sun for a long time, Martian ants do not even have eyes. It is worth mentioning that the discovery of Martian ants has inspired biologists. Perhaps in the Amazon rainforest, the soil is deeper, and there are many ant species that we have not yet discovered, which is very important for us to understand the evolutionary tree of insects. Very helpful. But all of this must be done before the Amazon rainforest is destroyed.

Wasps evolved into Martian ants, which looked regressed no matter what. Because wasps have wings, their attack power is also higher than that of ants. So why did the wasp give up the sky and live underground? This may be related to the rise of angiosperms during the Cretaceous period. These angiosperms appear in the soil and have a higher nutrient content.

In order to obtain more angiosperms, the wasps had to burrow into the soil for foraging, so the wings gradually lost their function and finally degenerated. Because of the long-term search for food in the soil without light, even the eyes have lost their function and thus degenerated.

120 million years ago, a relatively early group of wasps completely evolved into ants, and began to live in the dark underground for a long time. The remaining wasp populations were not worse than ants. For hundreds of millions of years, their combat effectiveness is also very strong. It can be said that nature is really amazing.