Pressed on a piece of rock is the flat body of a cicada, with 47 million years . Measuring about 2.5 cm (26.5mm) in length and 68.2 mm, its fossilized shape is almost intact, with its ribbed wings wide open. See the image above.
Scientists recently described the insect as a new genre and species, using this fossil and another almost well preserved from the same place. Although they are females, their location in the cicadas’ genealogical tree suggests that males of this species could sing like modern cicadas. Found in Germany for decades, his presence there reveals that singing cicadas dispersed in Europe millions of years before.
Fossils are also the oldest examples of “true” singing cicadas of the Cicadidae family, reported researchers on April 29 in Scientific Reports magazine. Most modern cicadas belong to this family, including annual cicadas that appear every summer worldwide, as well as litters of periodic black -body cicadas and red eyes, which emerge from May to June in east North America in 13 or 17 -year -olds. Linity XIV, one of the largest litters, emerges in a dozen US states this year. Cicadas are found on all continents, except in Antarctica, and there are over 3,000 species.
The fossil registration of insects in general is abundant in just a few dozen places and, although modern cicadas species are numerous today, paleontologists have not made 44 Cicadidae fossils. The oldest definitive fossil of a singer was discovered in Montana and dates from 59 to 56 million years ago, said the main author of the study, Dr. Hui Jiang, paleontologist and researcher at the Bonn Institute of Organism Biology at Bonn University, Germany. Her newly described relative is the oldest singer cicada in Europe, Jiang told CNN by email.
Since the body structures of European fossils were so well preserved, scientists were able to attribute the old insect to a modern cicadas tribe called Platypleurini, “which is now mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of sub -Saharan Africa and Asia, but is absent from Europe,” Jiang said.
Previous research has suggested that this lineage evolved in Africa about 30 to 25 million years ago and dispersed from there, according to Jiang. “This fossil retreats in approximately 20 million years the known fossil registration of Platypleurini tribe sound -producing cigarettes, indicating that the diversification of this group occurred long before what was previously recognized,” added the researcher.
The discovery suggests that this group of cicadas has evolved more slowly than the previous estimates proposed from molecular data, said Dr. Conrad Labandeira, senior researcher geologist and fossil arthropod curator at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
“This suggests that older fossils in Platypleurini have not yet been discovered,” said Labandeira, who did not participate in the research. “Such discoveries would help provide better calibrations to determine a more realistic evolutionary rate.”
The researchers baptized the cicada of Epoplatypleura messelensis. The name refers to the place where the specimens were discovered: the Messel well in Germany, a rich fossil site dating from the Eocene (57 million to 36 million years ago). Diggade in the 1980s, fossils have since been in the collection of the Senckenberg Research Institute and the Frankfurt Natural History Museum in Germany, a senior author of the study, Dr. Sonja Wedmann, head of the Paleoentomology Department of Senckenberg.
A very deep volcanic lake, with a background where oxygen did not penetrate, formerly filled the mesel well. This environment has created ideal conditions for fossilization, and thin grain sediments of this old lacustrious bed house a variety of eocene life, Wedmann told CNN by email.
“The excellent preservation not only of insects, but of all groups of organisms, is why Mesel is a UNESCO World Heritage Site,” a designation he received in 1995, Wedmann said.
The most complete of the two cicada fossils “is one of the best preserved insects on the Messel mine fossil site,” Wedmann added. “Senckenberg has a collection of over 20,000 Messel fossil insects, and among them, stands out for their really beautiful and complete preservation.”
In terms of general head and body format, E. messelensis is very similar to modern cicadas. Its rostro – a mouth -shaped mouth – is intact, but a deeper analysis is needed to determine if it used it to feed on plant tissues called xylem, like most modern cicadas, said Labandeira.
E. Messelensis also features colors and patterns in their wings. This feature camouflages the modern cicadas, which cling to trees, and may have served a similar purpose for E. messelensis, according to Jiang.
However, E. messelensis differs from modern cicadas in subtle aspects. For example, their anterior wings are wider and less elongated than living species today, which may have affected their flight.
Would the old cicada corner sound like that of its modern relatives? “We can’t know the exact corner,” said Jiang. However, based on the shape of the cigarette’s body and its position in the group of canopants, “it probably produced sounds with a function similar to that of modern cicadas.”
When litter XIV emerges from billions in late spring and early summer of 2025, its corners will measure 90 to 100 decibels – as high as a subway train. Other types of cicadas produce an even greater noise: the corner of the brevisana African cicada Brevis hits the peak in almost 107 decibels, almost as high as a jet taking off.
The volume of the corners of the old species may have been even higher, Jiang said. The E. Messelensis abdomen is wider and larger than that of its modern relatives, suggesting that males could have had a larger resonant cavity. This cavity may have amplified the sound of the vibratory structures in their abdomen, called eardrums, to produce higher buzz.
“Of course this is just a hypothesis,” added Jiang. “Future studies on how morphology relates to sound production in modern cicadas will help test it.”
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This content was originally published in millions of years cigarette fossil has intact wings and veins visible on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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