There is nothing like amber for its ability to preserve insects, plant material and much more. The remarkable ability of amber to preserve soft tissues makes it a tremendous resource for the palaeontologist. This new report is of Upper Triassic amber, which is considerably lower in the stratigraphic succession than most other ambers. It is so low that it predates most of the dinosaur fossil record, so it offers a window on a world that we know very little about. Looking for signs of past life, the researchers found “bacteria, fungi, algae and protozoans” – which in terms of the basal food webs is not so different from today. Furthermore, these organisms “are assignable to extant genera”. The researchers write: “it seems that the basal levels of food webs of terrestrial communities (biocoenoses) have undergone little or no morphological change from the Triassic to the Recent.”
Stasis, it seems, has characterised these organisms, despite the extraordinary changes in the environment that have been documented for this timespan of Earth history. This suggests that environmental selection forces are nowhere near as significant as the Darwinists claim, and it raises (yet again!) questions about the validity of the Neodarwinian Synthesis.
A microworld in Triassic amber
Amber as old as the first dinosaurs captured the diversity of microbial life 220 million years ago.
Alexander R. Schmidt, Eugenio Ragazzi, Olimpia Coppellotti and Guido Roghi
Nature 444, 835 (14 December 2006) | doi:10.1038/444835a
Amber provides an effective medium for conservation of soft-bodied microorganisms1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, but finds older than 135 million years are very rare and have not so far contained any microbial inclusions. Here we describe 220-million-year-old droplets of amber containing bacteria, fungi, algae and protozoans that are assignable to extant genera. These inclusions provide insight into the evolution and palaeoecology of Lower Mesozoic microorganisms: it seems that the basal levels of food webs of terrestrial communities (biocoenoses) have undergone little or no morphological change from the Triassic to the Recent.
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