Fossil discovery deepens the secret of snake flies

Fossil discovery deepens the secret of snake flies

Modern snake fly pictured above Fifty-two-million-year-old fossil snake fly from Driftwood Canyon in British Columbia. Credit: Fossil Image Copyright Zootaxa.

Fossil discoveries often help answer years of questions about how our modern world came to be. Sometimes, however, they deepen the mystery – as a recent discovery of four new species of ancient insects in the state of British Columbia and Washington proves.

The fossil species, recently discovered by paleontologists Bruce Archibald of Simon Fraser University and Vladimir Makarkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, comes from a group of insects known as snake flies, which now live about 50 million years ago in the region lived. The findings, published in Zootaxa, asks more questions about the evolutionary history of the clearly elongated insects and why they live where they live today.

Snake flies are slender, predatory insects native to the Northern Hemisphere and noticeably absent in tropical regions. Scientists have long believed that they need cold winters to develop adults, limiting them almost exclusively to regions experiencing winter-ripe days or colder. However, the fossil sites where the ancient species were found had a climate that does not fit this statement.

“The average annual climate was moderate like Vancouver or Seattle today, but important, with very mild winters with few or no frost days,” says Archibald. “We can see this through the appearance of frost-tolerant plants such as palms that exist in these forests along with northern plants such as spruce.”

The fossil sites where the ancient species were discovered stretch over 1,000 kilometers from an ancient highland from Driftwood Canyon in the northwest of the UK to the McAbee fossil site in the south of BC, and as far as the city of Republic in the north of Washington.

Fossil discovery deepens the secret of snake flies

Fifty-two million year old fossil snake flies from Driftwood Canyon in British Columbia. Credit: Copyright Zootaxa

According to Archibald, paleontologists have found species of two families of snake flies in these fossil areas, both of which were previously suspected of having cold winters to survive. Each family appears to have been independently adapted to cold winters after these fossils lived.

“Now we know that snake flies lived earlier in their evolutionary history in a climate with very mild winters, and the question then becomes why did they not have the ability to live in such regions? Why do snake flies not become in the tropics today? not found? “

Serious discovery of fossil insects in these areas has shown connections with Europe, the Pacific coast of Russia and even Australia.

Fossil discovery deepens the secret of snake flies

Archibald at Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park. Credit: Bruce Archibald

Archibald emphasizes that understanding how life adapts to the climate by looking deep into the past helps to explain why species are spreading around the world today, and can help to foresee how further climate change may pattern influence.

“Such discoveries are constantly coming from these fossil sites,” says Archibald. “It’s an important part of our heritage.”


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More information:
S. Bruce Archibald et al. Early Eocene snake flies (Raphidioptera) from western North America from the Okanagan Highlands and the formation of the Green River, Zootaxa (2021). DOI: 10.11646 / zootaxa.4951.1.2

Provided by Simon Fraser University

Quotation: Fossil discovery deepens the secret of snake flies (2021, April 6) detected on April 6, 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2021-04-fossil-discovery-deepens-snakefly-mystery.html

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