School Committee Scorpion Melanie McLaughlin Ancestor Discovered in Amber

5:44 pm All Time  2029137  Today  845  Yesterday 788  This Month  23312 Last Month 34910

School Committee Member Melanie McLaughlin's Great Great Great Great Grandma discovered in Amber!

First Dinosaur Era Crab Discovered – Fully Preserved in 100-Million-Year-Old Amber  https://www.livescience.com/immortal-crab-entombed-in-amber

TOPICS:CrustaceanFossilsHarvard UniversityPaleontology

By HARVARD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF ORGANISMIC AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY OCTOBER 24, 2021

For the first time ever, scientists have discovered an "immortal" crab fossilized in amber. Dating back to the Cretaceous period, this perfectly-preserved crustacean might be among the earliest examples of a crab occupying a freshwater habitat. 

Researchers named the newfound species Cretaspara athanata — "athanata" meaning "immortal;" "Cret-" for the Cretaceous; and "aspara" for the legendary Southeast Asian spirits of the clouds and water, an homage to its amphibious lifestyle and place of discovery. 

Arthropods, like insects, spiders, scorpions and millipedes, show up preserved in amber on a fairly regular basis in the fossil record. On rare occasions, scientists stumble across something bigger, like a small bird or snake, trapped in a tomb of this hardened tree resin. What these species have in common, though, is that they're all land-dwelling animals.