A grisly fate may have been in store for a fly larva concealed in the bloom.
A tiny flower that blossomed 30 million years ago still lingers today in near-perfect condition, preserved inside an airless amber tomb with only a wee wasp — also frozen in place — for company.
Study author George Poinar Jr., a researcher in the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University's College of Science in Corvallis, Oregon, described the wasp in 2020.
Perhaps the wasp wasn't interested in the flower and simply wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time, ending up encased in sticky resin. However, another possibility is that the wasp became stuck near the flower because it was visiting the blossom, either to eat its pollen or for a more gruesome reason: to lay an egg on the plant's inhabited seed pod, so that the wasp hatchling could then burrow inside to devour the fly larva.
However, fossil evidence of this group is rare and only one other fossil flower is known, from sedimentary deposits in western Tennessee, Poinar wrote.—Tardigrade trapped in amber is a never-before-seen speciesP. minima had a long stalk and no petals, but was instead topped by four seed pods, one of which held a single fly larva with a"smooth body" and a pair of tiny antennae.
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