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https://www.sciencealert.com/worlds-oldest-amber-comes-from-a-world-150-million-years-before-dinosaurs>
“We tend to think of tree resin as an ancient, fragrant defense against
munching insects – one that fends off pests and scabs over the wounds left by
their voracious mandibles.
But a new discovery suggests that these viscous secretions emerged in a very
different world from the one our minds conjure when we think of amber – one
without dinosaurs and even before insects had become major plant grazers.
In a bed of coal in China's far northwest, paleontologists have found hundreds
of microscopic fragments of amber that date back to the Middle Devonian, 385
million years ago – some 65 million years earlier than the previous record
holder, and 150 million years before the first dinosaurs.
"The importance is not simply that the record is older," paleontologist Cihang
Luo, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and first author of the new study
published in
Science Advances, told
ScienceAlert.
"The previous confirmed amber record came from the Late Carboniferous and was
probably associated with seed plants. Our amber comes from the Middle Devonian,
before seed plants had emerged and diversified.
"This means that a non-seed vascular plant was already capable of producing
chemically complex terpenoid resin."”
Via Susan ****
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
