What hides the "alien in amber": the mysteries of a prehistoric insect

Fans of science fiction films know that when the time comes to meet with an alien civilization, we will see stunted creatures with large heads and round eyes emerging from a flying saucer. But what if aliens have long been visiting Earth and left traces? Probably, paleontologists thought of the same thing, who found in amber a mysterious insect 100 million years old, which even now is on the poster of the next "Body Thieves": well, the spilled "green man"!

Amber instead of a flying saucer

Two insects, sealed in amber for one hundred million years, were found in the mines of the Hukaung Valley in Myanmar. The appearance of these guys was not so similar to everything seen before that they had to come up with a new detachment Aethiocarenodea, and the appearance itself was called Aethiocarenus burmanicus. Representatives of this detachment did not survive, as the habitat may have changed.

But most of all, scientists were surprised by the appearance of the insect. Triangular heads are found in modern insects (for example, in mantis), but they usually have the head attached to the body with the wide side, and their "faces" end at an angle. But the triangular head of Aethiocarenus burmanicus starts from the corner and then diverges upward, crowned with two huge eyes. Thanks to this arrangement, the insect could see 180 degrees around, as soon as he turned his head slightly.

Fear has big eyes

Other features of the fossil are a long, narrow and flat body, long and thin legs, especially the back pair is twice as long as the abdomen, as well as the absence of wings. That is, we are dealing with a very strange creation, more like a character in a science fiction film about aliens. Researchers believe that this tiny wingless insect lived in narrow crevices inside the tree bark and ate ticks, worms, or mushrooms while dinosaurs strolled past.

According to scientists, the first thought in discovering such “greetings from the past” was the memory of Stephen Spielberg’s film “Alien”. One of the researchers even made a mask in the shape of an insect head for Halloween. But the children who knocked on the door were scared at the sight of this “alien guest,” so the mask had to be removed.