Two prehistoric flies became amber after mating, which lasted for 465,438+0 million years. Why?

Amber is a very special fossil, which can isolate water and air, so that the ancient creatures wrapped in it will not contact with the outside world, so the bodies of ancient creatures will not rot into skeletons and can be well preserved. Through amber fossils, paleontologists can understand the paleontology of the earth tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of years ago.

It was once thought that if we could find amber, a prehistoric mosquito that sucked dinosaur blood, and then extract dinosaur blood from prehistoric mosquitoes, we could get dinosaur DNA, and then resurrect dinosaurs through cloning technology. Although this prehistoric mosquito amber has not been discovered, scientists have found some strange or embarrassing amber fossils.

In an amber fossil dating back 4,654,380 million years, scientists found two prehistoric flies. Although they have already died, they still keep mating, which makes people lament the magic of nature.

So, how did amber come from? Why did these two unlucky prehistoric flies turn into amber?

The formation of amber takes a very long time, usually tens of millions of years. Their predecessor was resin, which was secreted by ancient cypress, pine and other trees. Coincidentally, if these viscous liquids enter the ground, they will gradually turn amber under long-term high temperature and high pressure environment.

Tens of millions of years ago, the earth was warm for a period of time, when a large number of cypress, pine and other trees were bred in many places. These trees produce a lot of resins, some of which become amber after a long geological process. At present, most amber found on the earth comes from that period.

Near the tree, there are many small animals, such as ants, flies and birds. If these animals are only wrapped in dripping resin and turned into amber, they will not be completely decomposed by nature, which gives human beings the opportunity to study prehistoric animals.

Those two prehistoric flies 4 1 10,000 years ago are really unlucky. They are wrapped in dripping resin during mating, and then turned into amber, and the result still needs to be seen by humans. Of course, it's also because they last too long.

The mating time of most animals is very short, because the longer it lasts, the more likely it is to encounter danger, so it will be gradually eliminated by natural selection. After all, survival is the most important thing, and reproduction can only depend on the future.

However, the mating duration of flies can exceed half an hour, and the longest can reach 2 hours. As long as you mate once, the female flies can lay eggs for life, which is also an important reason why flies can live forever.

If those two prehistoric flies can end as early as other animals, their chances of becoming amber will be greatly reduced. Of course, in that case, it is difficult for human beings to have a chance to understand the reproductive behavior of prehistoric animals.

As for reviving prehistoric animals by extracting the DNA of animals in amber, it is basically impossible at present. Because DNA is difficult to preserve for a long time, the structure will degrade quickly and will not last for tens of millions of years.

Previously, some scientists claimed that animal DNA was extracted from amber tens of millions of years ago, but the experiment was not repetitive. Moreover, even if DNA is extracted, it is only some sequence fragments, which can not be used to revive paleontology at present.