Today ants are widespread worldwide and dominate the ecosystems in which they occur. In Brazil, paleontologists have now discovered an important fossil from the early days of this success story: the oldest ant ant. The primeval insect lived in the middle Cretaceous period 113 million years ago and belonged to the group of so -called hell ants, which was characterized by bizarre mouthwear.
A world without ants is unthinkable today. The social insects occur on all continents with the exception of Antarctica and, together, weigh more than all birds and wild mammals. “Modern ants are among the most ecologically dominant animal groups on earth,” emphasize Anderson Lepeco from the Zoological Museum of the University of São Paulo and his colleagues. In the museum’s collection, the team has just made a very special find, which reveals more about the beginnings of this success story.
A Brazilian hell anne
It is a 113 million year old fossil ant from the Crato formation in northeastern Brazil: the oldest ant ever discovered. The species baptized in Vulcanidris Cratensis lived in the middle Cretaceous season and exceeds the age of the oldest anthrest anthrums so far by 13 million years, as the team reports. These are also preserved as an amber-inclusive, vulcanidris, on the other hand, as a rock fossil, which makes the find even more unique. The very first ants on the planet, however, was not more than one centimeter vulcanid art. Family tree analyzes indicate that the first ants split off from the Apooiden overfamily about 139.7 million years ago, which includes bees and burial wasps.
Although Vulcanidris was not the first ant, it was one of the earliest ants groups: the so -called hell ants from the sub -family of the Haidomyrmecinae today extinct. Hell ants are known for their bizarre predatory adjustments, including the newly discovered Brazilian specimen: “The micro-computed tomography of Vulcanidris Cratensis showed remarkable mouth tools with backwards that touch the head shield and form a space that probably served to take the prey,” Lepeco and his colleagues explain. This complex feeding apparatus testifies that early ants had already developed sophisticated predatory strategies that differed significantly from those of their modern counterparts.
Globetrotter of the Cretaceous period
However, Vulcanidris is special not only because of its anatomy or age, but also because of its location in Brazil. Because the other well-known hell ants types have been discovered on other continents: in France, Myanmar and Canada. This suggests a wide geographical spread of the group during the Cretaceous period, as the team explains. The hell ants apparently also coped with very different climate conditions. According to the paleontologists, northeastern Brazil was once a semi -dry area, while in France and Südkanada dense, tropical forests grew at the same time. “Accordingly, hell ants had a wide ecological spectrum and occurred in remarkably different environments around the world,” the study said.
Source: Anderson Lepeco (Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo) et al.; Current biology, DOI: 10.1016/J.CUB.2025.03.023