“Fossilised behaviour is exceedingly rare, predation especially so,” says Phillip Barden, who studies social insect evolution at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He adds that “to see an extinct predator caught in the act of capturing its prey is invaluable.” This is exactly what has been found in a piece of clear yellow amber from a quarry in the Hukawng Valley, Myanmar. Measuring only 13 × 10 × 6 mm, the allegedly-99-million-year-old rounded chunk contains two insects. A hell ant (Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri) is grasping a nymph of Caputoraptor elegans, an extinct relative of the cockroach. Using its scythe-like mandibles (jaws), and a horn protruding from the top of its head, the hell ant has effectively put a clamp around its prey’s neck. This is the first time that the hell ant (also now extinct) has been observed actively feeding in the fossil record.

The amber has preserved these organisms in incredible detail. It adds to an ever-growing list of ‘movement in action’ or frozen behaviour associated with fossils. The research paper offered no explanation as to how the insects became trapped. There simply is no slow scenario by which the hell ant caught in the middle of its predatory practice could have been preserved. Resin oozing from a damaged tree at a snail’s pace would not be sufficient. Rather, the events at the time of Noah’s Flood, some 4,500 years ago, do provide the right circumstances. As forests were ripped up during the Flood, trees transported in the water would have collided together. This would have released large quantities of resin into the water and onto the logs. It would have rapidly engulfed any small creatures, mostly insects, with which it came into contact.

• Barden, P. and 2 others, Specialized predation drives aberrant morphological integration and diversity in the earliest ants, Current Biology, 30, 17, 5 October 2020.
• Casella, C., Prehistoric ‘Hell Ant’ stuck in amber has been mauling its prey for 99 million years, sciencealert.com, 6 August 2020.

Images from reference 1 – reprinted with permission from Elsevier.