NEWARK, NJ, Nov. 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Their nomadic lifestyle and predation have brought army ants (Dorylinae) to most of Earth’s continents, but a rare fossil discovery is now providing the first evidence that the notorious predators once swarmed a country where they are conspicuously absent today – Europe.

In the diary biology lettersResearchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Colorado State University have reported the discovery of the oldest army ant preserved in Eocene (about 35 million years ago) Baltic amber.

The eyeless specimen Dissimulodorylus perseus (D. pers) — named after the mythical Greek hero Perseus, who famously defeated Medusa with impaired vision – is only the second army ant fossil species ever described and the first army ant fossil recovered from the Eastern Hemisphere.

Researchers say the ant fossil, about 3 millimeters long, brings to light previously unknown lineages of army ants that would have existed across continental Europe before going extinct in the last 50 million years.

Remarkably, the fossil was kept in obscurity at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology for almost 100 years before it was discovered by the publication’s lead author and NJIT Ph.D. has been identified. Candidate Christine Sosiak.

“The museum houses hundreds of drawers full of insect fossils, but I happened to stumble upon a tiny specimen labeled as a common ant species while collecting data for another project,” Sosiak said. “When I put the ant under the microscope, I immediately realized the label was inaccurate… I thought that’s something else entirely.”

“This amber was excavated around or before the 1930s, So it’s surprising enough to learn now that it contained a rare army ant, let alone one that shows these ants roamed Europe,” said Phillip Barden, assistant professor of biology at NJIT and senior author of the paper. “From what we know about army ants living…