A fossil of a giant, ancient ant was discovered in the nearby Allenby Formation, a rock formation that contains many plant and animal fossils. The discovery was made by a resident of Princeton, a city in the U.S. Check out more about the species and its discovery!
Titanomyrma
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Titanomyrma is an extinct genus of ants that lived during the Eocene epoch, approximately 50 million years ago. They were first described in 1937 and are known from fossil remains.
Titanomyrma ants were large compared to modern ants, with some species reaching up to 5 centimeters in length. They had a unique morphology, with elongated jaws and wings much longer than their bodies, so they were likely able to fly and may have been pollinators important.
doctor Bruce Archibald, Paleoentomologist at Simon Fraser University and first discovered a specimen similar in 2010 in Wyoming, but he said he was thrilled when another fossil of the huge insect turned up in BC.
“The tremendously large ants are mostly known from Germany and Wyoming. And so I found one of these ants in a museum drawer at the Denver Museum around 2010 and I wrote it down in 2011. And it made quite an impact, and we found that we were mostly working on the biogeography of it,” said Bruce.
Based on other research, scientists discovered that the largest ants lived in places with warm temperatures. Furthermore, the researchers also theorized that a brief period of global warming called "hyperthermals" enabled the ants to travel at much higher temperatures.
doctor Archibald also said researchers may need to revise their thinking about tolerance. climate of giant ants, if indeed the size is comparable to other specimens found previously.
“So if it's a small ant, we were probably right in our 2011 idea, and these ants needed to reduce their size to live in a colder climate. If it's big and we're wrong, we have to revise our thinking about the ecology of these giant ants. So maybe they could cross the north, cross the Arctic at any time and they're not heat lovers. Maybe they're just hating the winter," Bruce said.
Next Thursday (16), Dr. Archibald will be presenting a talk at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC. The lecture will address fossilized insects in BC and what can be done to inform people about global biodiversity.
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