Hummingbird-Sized Ants Once Roamed Wyoming - 10:00 AM -
Categories: Animals It’s not a bird or a plane, but it is an ant
the size of a hummingbird. The new species, Titanomyrma lubei,
is related to giant ants previously found in German fossils.
These long-distance relatives bolster the notion that the
climate of the time had hot blips that allowed warmth-loving
giant insects to spread from continent to continent, Archibald
and a U.S.-Canada team propose online May 4 in the Proceedings
of the Royal Society B. An ancient ant wing from Tennessee had
hinted that big ants lived in North America during this time,
says Torsten Wappler of the University of Bonn in Germany. “But
complete preserved specimens were not known until Bruce came up
with this beautiful preserved fossil.” The new fossil caught
Archibald’s eye as he and co-author Kirk Johnson poked around
storage drawers at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, where
Johnson works. The spookiest thing about the Wyoming ant may be
that even at 5.1 centimeters [