Tardigrades – tiny organisms that live in the water or in moist places on land – are known to be extremely persistent. They survive, for example, if they are exposed to space unprotected for a while on the outside of a space probe. Or if you lock them in a freezer for decades. However, it is unlikely that the spirits will return to the specimen that a research team led by Phillip Barden from the New Jersey Institute of Technology is now presenting to experts in the journal »Proceedings of the Royal Society B«: 16 million years ago, it was trapped by a drop of resin, which subsequently fossilized.
The members of Barden's teams came across it by chance. Actually, they had been on the ants that were also enclosed when someone noticed the tiny stain at one point in the preparation after months. He turned out to be (very) careful as a bearded by about half a millimeter. A sensational find, says Barden: "There is only once in every generation."
Exactly three fossil bears (Tardigrada) are now known.
The two previously found come from the Cretaceous period and are again much older.
Bearders hardly petrify because they have such a soft body.
And once they steered, they rarely be tracked down because they are so small.
The experts from Barden's group examined their find with special microscope technology and came to the conclusion that it was a member of the Eutardigradia, more precisely the first known representative of the Isohypsibioidea super family, which is characterized by different sizes on all stubbe. They gave the fossil the species name Paradoryphoribius Chronocaribbeus. The -Caribbeus alludes to the Caribbean origin of the amber.
Bärtchen had already "seen everything on this earth," says Barden - from the age, when the plants conquered the dry country, to the decline of the dinosaur and the rise of mammals. "Nevertheless, they are like a kind of ghost line for paleontologists, practically without fossil evidence." The Newfound helps to understand their development through the history of the earth. However, he also only scratches at its utmost, because the line of the beards probably split off from the other wildlife 540 million years ago in the Cambrium. The closest relatives are now part of the limbs and Stummelfüßer.
