Ecological reconstruction of Cretophengodes azari. Credit: Dinghua Yang
Science Tech Daily has a story about bioluminescence in beetles. This study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, looked at an insect preserved in amber from Myanmar. Myanmar amber dates to Cretaceous Period about 99 million years ago,
Bioluminescence has fascinated people since time immemorial. The majority of organisms able to produce their own light are beetles, specifically fireflies, glow-worm beetles, and their relatives.
While the chemistry that gives some insects the almost magical ability to glow is now reasonably well-appreciated, much less is known about how these signals evolved.
New research by a team of scientists led by the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) has provided new insight on the evolution of this capacity. Their research focuses on the newly discovered family of Cretophengodidae, found in a Cretaceous amber fossil, which sheds light on bioluminescence in beetles. Their study was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on January 20, 2021.
“The newly discovered fossil, preserved with lifelike fidelity in amber, represents an extinct relative of the fireflies and the smaller families Rhagophthalmidae and Phengodidae,” said paleontologist and lead author LI Yanda, a scientist at NIGPAS and Peking University.
