Finds in Amber From Southern Gondwana — Australia and New Zealand

[Recusant]

I don't know that there's anything really groundbreaking in this paper, but I think it's noteworthy anyway. If for nothing else than insects in flagrante delicto for millions of years. 

"Gondwana in amber" | Cosmos

A large piece of amber with an association of two flies (long-legged on left and biting midge on right) with the first ever Australian fossil of a large mite of the extant genus, Leptus, ca. 41 million years old. Image Credit: Enrique Peñalver

An international team of palaeontologists has discovered an assortment of intact amber fossils in the Southern Hemisphere that date from the mid-Paleogene to the Late Triassic, 40 to 230 million years ago, reporting their find in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

An international team of palaeontologists has discovered an assortment of intact amber fossils in the Southern Hemisphere that date from the mid-Paleogene to the Late Triassic, 40 to 230 million years ago, reporting their find in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

The discovery includes southern Gondwana's earliest fossil record of diverse groups of animals, plants and microorganisms, according to first author Jeffrey Stilwell from Monash University, Melbourne, and showcases the antiquity of modern life on Earth.

It gives us "our first definitive glimpses of ancient subpolar greenhouse Earth ecosystems, when Australia and Antarctica were attached and situated much further south in higher latitudes", he says.

Among the relics are the first Australian fossils of slender springtails – a tiny, wingless hexapod, a cluster of juvenile spiders, biting midges (Ceratopogonidae) and the oldest known fossilised ants from this region.

"[W]e can now state for the first time that ants have been a significant part of the Australian ecosystem since the late middle Eocene Epoch," says Stilwell, "when Australia was still attached to Antarctica during the last gasp of the Gondwana supercontinent."

A notable rarity is two flies (Dolichopodidae) frozen while mating. "You could say these long-legged flies were caught in the act 42-40 million years ago, which is astounding for palaeontology in this country."

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access, and is linked in the first paragraph of the article, but for convenience:

"Amber from the Triassic to Paleogene of Australia and New Zealand as exceptional preservation of poorly known terrestrial ecosystems" | Scientific Reports

Abstract:

The Northern Hemisphere dominates our knowledge of Mesozoic and Cenozoic fossilized tree resin (amber) with few findings from the high southern paleolatitudes of Southern Pangea and Southern Gondwana. Here we report new Pangean and Gondwana amber occurrences dating from ~230 to 40 Ma from Australia (Late Triassic and Paleogene of Tasmania; Late Cretaceous Gippsland Basin in Victoria; Paleocene and late middle Eocene of Victoria) and New Zealand (Late Cretaceous Chatham Islands). The Paleogene, richly fossiliferous deposits contain significant and diverse inclusions of arthropods, plants and fungi. These austral discoveries open six new windows to different but crucial intervals of the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic, providing the earliest occurrence(s) of some taxa in the modern fauna and flora giving new insights into the ecology and evolution of polar and subpolar terrestrial ecosystems.

[Tank]

Love this sort of story.

[xSilverPhinx]

What I want to know is when we will be getting a Triassic to Paleogene Park.