dirt ball are n’t the first thing that come in to judgment when we think of Antarctica , but as the discovery of a rarefied Antarctic beetle shows , this frozen continent was quite dissimilar trillion of years ago .
investigator from North Dakota State University and the Smithsonian Institute have discovered the fossilized fore-wing of two extinct beetle on Beardmore Glacier near the Transantarctic Mountains . They typify the first basis mallet ever found on the frozen continent . The mallet , now live as Ball ’s Antarctic Tundra Beetle , lived between 14 to 20 million years ago when the continent was warm than it is now .
Today , the only known insects on Antarctica are three metal money of flightless midge ( they look like tiny flies ) . Bugs have a hard time in this part of the world owing to the cold temperature and the lack of flora and wet .
The author of the unexampled study say the mallet in all likelihood inhabited the sparsely - vegetated sand and gravel bank of a meltwater - fed flow . This beetle , which may or may not have been able to fly , lived alongside such flora as the southern beech tree , buttercup , moss mats , and cushion plant .
compose in the open access journal ZooKeys , researchers Allan Ashworth and Terry Erwin mull that the beetle was descended from an ancient lineage of beetle that were once wide distributed in Gondwana , the supercontinent that used to join what is now Antarctica , South America , Africa , Australia , and several other geographic regions . The uncovering of Ball ’s Antarctic Tundra Beetle shows tracing of Gondwana ’s ancient ecosystem persevered in Antarctica for jillion of years after the supercontinent itself come apart aside .
[ ZooKeys ]
AntarcticabeetlesInsectsPaleontologyScience
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