The fossil beetle, Propiestus archaicus, preserved in amber
(Credit: Field Museum, Shuhei Yamamoto)
Posted on 11/02/2018 7:42:10 AM PDT by ETL
A 99-million-year-old beetle has been found, trapped in amber, stunning scientists.
The new beetle, known as Propiestus archaicus, was found in Hukawng Valley in the northern part Myanmar, near China's southern border. P. archaicus is a distant relative of today's rove beetles, found in South America and the southern part of Arizona, revealing that the continents shifted rapidly millions of years ago to what we now see today.
"This is a very rare find," Shuhei Yamamoto said, a Field Museum researcher and lead author of a paper in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, said in a statement.
Thanks to the beetle, the researchers now believe that Myanmar was part of Gondwanaland, a massive continent that was formed after Pangea broke up.
During the Late Cretaceous period, massive dinosaurs walked the Earth, but it's the diminutive beetle, which measures 0.1 inches long, that surprised the researchers.
Yamamoto noted the beetles were walking underneath rotting trees and their antennae helped them navigate the tough terrain.
"The antennae probably had a highly sensitive ability as a sensory organ," Yamamoto said. "There wouldn't have been a lot of space available in the beetle's habitat, so it was important to be able to detect everything."
Yamamoto added that the finding "probably shows some amazing connections between [the] Southern Hemisphere and Myanmar."
"This fossil helps us understand life in the Mesozoic era," he concluded. "We need to think about everything from that time, both big and small."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Paul McCartney doesn’t look much better.
99 million? LOL! How do they know this? Did they find it’s birth certificate too? I think they pull up these dates out of thin air because it satisfies them as “it sounds good”.
“The antennae probably had a highly sensitive ability as a sensory organ,” Yamamoto said. “There wouldn’t have been a lot of space available in the beetle’s habitat, so it was important to be able to detect everything.”
...
Except for tree resin that would trap it for 99 million years.
Tell Amber to stop eating bugs.
It’s a shame the Burmese don’t know they live in Burma.
Radiometric dating or radioactive dating is a technique used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed.
The method compares the abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope within the material to the abundance of its decay products, which form at a known constant rate of decay.[1]
The use of radiometric dating was first published in 1907 by Bertram Boltwood[2] and is now the principal source of information about the absolute age of rocks and other geological features, including the age of fossilized life forms or the age of the Earth itself, and can also be used to date a wide range of natural and man-made materials.
Together with stratigraphic principles, radiometric dating methods are used in geochronology to establish the geologic time scale.[3] Among the best-known techniques are radiocarbon dating, potassium–argon dating and uranium–lead dating.
By allowing the establishment of geological timescales, it provides a significant source of information about the ages of fossils and the deduced rates of evolutionary change. Radiometric dating is also used to date archaeological materials, including ancient artifacts.
Different methods of radiometric dating vary in the timescale over which they are accurate and the materials to which they can be applied.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
Ringo, on the other hand, still looks great for his age.
It was still Burma then.
Reminds me of an actor who played Einstein in a special 2-hour documentary, titled Einstein Revealed. Turned out he was the same guy who played the bumbling Spanish waiter, "Manuel", on Fawlty Towers!
The more zeros in the date, the more zeros in the checks from the government grants.
As if a chunk of amber could resist 99,000,000 years of oxidation. Modern Science is as much of a religion as voodoo is.
Paul must’ve kicked him out of the band even before kicking out Pete Best.
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