Scientists from Simon Fraser University found a fossil near Princeton, B.C., which has left them wondering how plants and animals spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere about 50 million years ago. They want to find out if brief periods of global warming played a part in this process.
Beverley Burlingame from Princeton found a fossil and took it to the town’s museum where scientists studied it. They learned that it is the first example of an extinct species of ant called Titanomyrma, which was unusually big – almost as heavy as a wren with wings that stretched half a foot wide!
Bruce Archibald, Rolf Mathewes from SFU and Arvid Aase from Fossil Butte National Monument in Wyoming have published their findings about a fossil in the journal The Canadian Entomologist.
Ten years ago, a team of scientists found an amazing fossil from Wyoming in a museum drawer in Denver. It turned out to be from an ant called ‘Titanomyrma’ which was similar to the Titanomyrma fossils that had been long known from Germany and England! This made them wonder how these ancient insects could have traveled across continents between Europe and North America to appear on both sides of the Atlantic at roughly the same time.
Europe and North America had not been split apart yet because the Atlantic Ocean hadn’t opened up enough from continental shift. But was it warm enough at the time for people to travel between them?
The researchers looked at where ants live in Wyoming and Europe, which used to be very hot climates. They noticed that the queen ants were bigger than usual in these areas. However, this creates an issue because even though the Arctic used to have a warmer climate than now, it wouldn’t have been warm enough for Titanomyrma ants to survive there.
Giant Ants Stumped Scientists
Researchers suggested in 2011 that Titanomyrma might have been able to cross using brief, global warming periods called “hyperthermals.” They believed they wouldn’t be found in the cooler uplands of Canada. But now, one has been discovered there!
This story just got more exciting! A Canadian fossil was found but due to the pressure that acted on it during fossilization, we can’t know for sure how big it was. It could even have been as large as some of the biggest queens ever known – or smaller!
“Are the ants living in this cold region smaller because they adapted over time, or are they big and disproves our belief that gigantic ants can cross the Arctic?” asked Archibald.
Archibald says this research is helping scientists understand how BC’s community of animals and plants attached themselves together when the climate was different. He said: “Figuring out how life spread across the northern parts of Earth 50 million years ago gives us insight into patterns we can still see today with animals and plants”.
Studying Titanomyrma can tell us a lot about how global warming could change the way living things are spread out across the world. To be ready for what’s coming, it’s important to look into what happened in the past. More fossils will help us figure out if our thinking needs to be updated. Until then, this question is still a mystery.
In February of 2023, scientists published a paper called “Eocene Giant Ants, Arctic Intercontinental Dispersal, and Hyperthermals Revisited: Discovery of fossil Titanomyrma in the Cool Uplands of British Columbia, Canada”. They studied huge ancient ants that had spread around the world from thousands of years ago. These ants were discovered in Canda’s cool upland areas.