#fossil ant

[futurebird]

She looks so mad to be trapped in amber! Free her!

Hell ant

Photo Credit: Barden, Herhold, Grimaldi, 2017

[mushrooms-and-millipedes]

YO NEW HELL ANT JUST DROPPED

IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE NO LESS

This is from a study just published a few days ago by Lepeco et al. (2025).

Hell ants (subfamily: Haidomyrmecinae) are super cool ants that possessed vertically closing jaws.

Below is a model of the ant's body/anatomy generated via micro-computed tomography

Vulcanidris cratensis is a new species discovered in Brazil. It dates back to the lower Cretaceous, and at the time of writing, is now the oldest known ant to science!

[samimarkart]

yesterday’s meet the artist event at the library for my art show was a lot of fun! super thankful for the experience and the people I got to meet :)

these are the remaining pieces available for sale, with the show coming down on August 1st! They are all up on my website if one piques your interest - I’m hoping to work on some new quilting projects soon!

[spiny-ant]

dinosaur ant (N. macrops) stimboard would be really cool!!!

Graaaaagh

🦖-🦖-🦖|🦖-🐜-🦖|🦖-🦖-🦖

[geologyin-blog]

The largest ants that ever lived were the Titanomyrma ants. These giant ants roamed the Earth during the Eocene epoch, which lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago. Fossil evidence of Titanomyrma has been discovered in Europe (Germany and England) and North America (Wyoming and British Columbia, Canada),

[mindblowingscience]

Arachnophobia can make humans flee at the sight of a brown recluse, black widow or even a daddy long legs, but animal predators of spiders know no such fear. That's why, paleobiologist George Poinar Jr. explains, some spider species have developed the defense of deception. They masquerade as a much less desirable prey—ants—and Poinar's recent paper in Historical Biology presents an early record of an ant-mimicking spider in fossilized resin.

Continue Reading.

[starryspngs]

Amber Source: X / X / X / X / X / X / X / X / X

[transparentfossil]

Winged Male Ant Caught in Spider Webbing, Aradid Flat Bug in Authentic Dominican Amber Fossil

[futurebird]

The Dawn of the Age of the Ants

Sometimes a fossils are like photographs. These ants preserved in the Green River seem like they could come alive and walk right out of the stone.

Most fossils of ants are found in amber, due to their small size, sedimentary fossils must have exceptional fine grain detail to make ants recognizable.

The first image is from University of Colorado collection. https://fossilinsects.colorado.edu/

The second image I've been trying to track down-- I don't know where it is, but it is from Green River.

That first fossil is so beautiful I could cry. Look at her eye! what did she see in the Eocene? This at the dawn of the Age of the Ants... did she know her kind would inherit the whole world?

[greenfrog04]

A Miocene ant species of the genus Forelius Emery, 1888 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Dolichoderinae) from Mexico

Published 15th September 2023

A new species of miocene ant preserved in amber, Forelius chenpauch, is the first fossil ant species of the New World genus Forelius; the specimen was found in the Montecristo mine, Chiapas, Mexico.

Forelius chenpauch holotype

Forelius chenpauch holotype closeup and line drawing

source:

[dyanamic]

Discover the 99-million-year-old “Hell Ant,” the oldest ant fossil ever found. Learn how this prehistoric predator reveals secrets of ancient ecosystems.

[covenawhite66]

Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri

[thornestar]

I’m definitely not waking up at 4am to check in on my dark bidding. But since I’m up…

[futurebird]

[Image Description: A clear green glob like a lump of jello, inside there is a long-bodied black ant, her legs are splayed out, but otherwise she looks very life-like]

I wonder what she saw? There are no ants quite like her alive anymore, though she may have close relatives... I wonder how big her colony was ... did they miss her when one day she never came home?

Dominican amber with a preserved ant at the Amber Museum in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

[fibfoolingart]

the lords in black were summoned, but if the lakeside mall was a shorter walk than the high school

i was thinking ab how the lords’ “holding court in their form” seems influenced by being summoned in a high school, and what they might look like if they were summoned in the mall instead.

so instead of jocks and theatre nerds, we get: a mall goth, a food court employee, an unattended sticky child, a mall cop, and an ancient mall walker.

further explanation (semi pete’s pov) of what role they take and the kind of feelings they evoke below the cut:

pokey is a mall goth. but not the kind built on personal freedoms or anti-establishment grit. pokey feels like a mall goth curated by the algorithm, tiktok trends and a thousand-dollar amazon cart. his hair’s professionally dyed, his boots unscuffed. but that’s not really what you notice. it’s the presence he radiates, this quiet, sharpened confidence that only comes from belonging. you’ve never worn black lipstick, never cared for goth music, but still… something about him makes you wish you did. makes you wish you could walk beside him. his blue is familiar (not like richie’s warm teal, staining your fingers in a cramped bathroom) but in a painful way. it’s the blue of dart frogs and stovetop flames. of winter skies so empty and flat they feel like a threat. and when he looks at you, really looks, you’re not just alone. you’re individual. and it hurts.

nibbly is probably the happiest food court worker you’ve ever seen. or maybe he’s just grinning. a grin that stretches too wide, showing every tooth. too wide to be safe. nibbly’s the color of intestines, of pus-pocked acne, of grease shimmering over something bloody. his uniform might’ve started as the same highlighter pink behind every counter, but now it’s muted, aged by years (or eons) of absorbing grease. it almost looks like nibbly himself has been steeped in oil: hair clumped and sticky against his face, his shirt, your food. his visor is dull pink, his eyes cloaked in shadow. he holds a tray out to you. your hands twitch to take it. it feels like you’re supposed to relieve him of it. it’s your order. even if you didn’t place one. even if you don’t know what’s on it. you just… know. and somewhere deep in your stomach, you get the sinking feeling that it’s not the food he wants to eat.

wiggly is a paragon of snotty mall kids. sticky, unsupervised, and terrifyingly confident in the way only children who've never been punished can be. he’s also unmistakably green, crusted around his nose and mouth, fossilized under his fingernails, soaked into his shirt. and he hates you. not in the vague, bratty way. this is something deeper. something personal. every unattended kid in a mall dreams of crushing you like an ant. but when this kid looks at you, you understand that he can. he holds himself with more than reckless confidence. he’s not just sure no one will stop him. he’s sure you can’t.

blinky is a mall cop whose issues with authority transcend the stereotype. he doesn’t resent power, he needs it. he deserves it. He’s compensating for it, breathing down, your neck, keeping constant vigilance. you’ve seen him before. every mall has one. maybe it’s the flickering security cameras blinking orange in the corners. maybe it’s the static whisper of the walkie-talkie on his shoulder. maybe it’s just the way you feel watched before you’ve even walked inside. his sunglasses hide his eyes, but somehow you know. he’s looking at you. you haven’t done anything wrong. not really. but he knows. he knows what you would do. and he’s waiting for it.

tinky is still walking. he’s been walking since the fountain ran. maybe since the mall opened. maybe since before that. his tracksuit used to be tan. now it’s yellow, sickly, rusted, corroded by sweat and time. his skin, his hair, his eyes, everything about him is yellowing, wilting. creased with the dusty, moldy hue of things forgotten in the dark. his walk is slow. wheezing. bones grinding under paper-thin skin. but he doesn’t stop. he never stops. he laps the fountain, again and again. when he looks at you (eyes jaundiced yellow under the cloud of curdled milk cataracts) you feel it. not fear. not pity. recognition. you wonder if this is your future. if this is all that’s left for you. just the suit. the steps. the orbit.

but also their designs might still be the same bc the summoners are still high schoolers, and the lords are just mirroring them lol

[vennitrii]

hey man maybe if you think about the fact that dogs dream, and that non-human animals play, and that octopuses decorate their dens, and that there are non-human animals that have cultures, and that ants teach each other, and that fossils exist, and that there are so many forms of language and communication, and that fellow apes look so much like us, and that we are not alone you'll see the beauty and joy