Alienoptera: scientists find bizarre hybrid of praying mantis and cockroach in 99-million-year-old amber from Myanmar
Predator and prey used to be closer than they are now, but were they at some point one and the same?
It isn’t every day that scientists stumble upon an ancient hybrid form of two species that now live as predator and prey, but a joint research team from China and Germany have discovered just that in a piece of amber from Myanmar.
Contained in fossil resin believed to date back 99 million years, the team found the remains of a creature bearing the hallmarks of a praying mantis - a natural-born hunter insect known for its elongated legs - and a cockroach, one of the world’s most famous scavengers.
The creature was so strange it prompted the researchers to create a new order for it in the Insecta class: Alienoptera.
The specimen featured a triangular head, powerful jaws and strong forelegs for hunting - all typical of the mantis - but its wings, claws and other body parts were deemed closer to common household roaches, the team reported in the international journal Gondwana Research.
The team was led by Professor Yang Xingke at the Institute of Zoology in Beijing, which operates under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor Rolf Georg Beutel from Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) in Thuringia, Germany.
The study is interesting because mantises and cockroaches stand as very successfully players in the history of evolution. Historically, they were more closely related than they are now.