Emily Chan
Around 40 million years ago, Europe’s climate was warmer and more humid, providing the ideal conditions for tiny winged insects, like gnats, to thrive.
One of these gnats got itself trapped in a piece of amber. Recent analysis of the amber has led to new knowledge about ancient gnat species.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have also discovered that it contains the first fossil of a rare predatory fungus gnat species.
The gnat, Robsonomyia henningseni, has never been studied before. It was found in a piece of amber along the North Sea coast of Denmark in the 1960s.
The piece has remained in the vast collection of the Natural History Museum of Denmark for decades. However, a team of Polish scientists removed it from the collection to conduct a thorough examination.
They were able to determine that the gnat was an extinct species that belonged to a rare genus of predatory gnats. Living species of the genus are currently only found in California and Hokkaido, Japan.
“This is the first time that anyone has found a fossil gnat of this genus, which were only thought to live in Japan and North America.
The finding demonstrates that this type of gnat was also widespread in Europe during past climates and gives us new knowledge about the gnat’s distribution on Earth,” said Alicja Pełczyńska, a Ph.D. student at the University of Łódź and the University of Copenhagen.
It is believed that the gnat connects its two rare relatives still living in the United States and Japan. The distance between the existing species has always puzzled researchers, but the new fossil indicates that the species must have traveled across the European continent.
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