@earthstory / earthstory.tumblr.com
Meine Fossilien-Sammlung | My fossil collection
[56]
Bernstein - fossiles Baumharz mit einer Ameise | Amber - fossil tree resin with an ant
Bitterfeld
unteres Oligozän - unteres Miozän | lower Oligocene - lower Miocene
24 - 20 Mio Jahre alt | 24 - 20 mya
Sorted Garnets This is kinda neat. This is a pile of sand-sized grains of garnets, originally from New Mexico. The grains started out in one of several large areas of precambrian-aged metamorphic rocks exposed in the area; these rocks originally were metamorphosed as the continent Laurentia – today forming the bulk of North America – was growing by collisions with other continents and island arcs. Those ancient rocks are now exposed at the surface today, where they are eroding and shedding sediments into nearby lowlands. This sand was first sorted and kicked up by ants, while they were building hills out of sand grains.
Amber with winged termite and winged ant inclusions
Large ant in amber Baltic amber (aka succinite) is 44 million years old, dating from the warm Eocene period. It is found in Poland and Russia, though some deposits far away in Saxony seem to represent redeposited Baltic material carried by rivers in the Miocene. It is mainly found in Poland, the Baltic states and Russia, and is made of the fossilised resin of several tree species, probably related to the Japanese umbrella pine. Of course, we're fascinated by its inclusions, and Baltic amber has the widest variety of species represented, including this large ant. Loz Image credit: Anders L Damgaard
stoned_on_stones
Hard to believe this piece is still in my collection. This piece of amber has a flying ant perfectly captured inside and is wrapped with a mix of silver and goldfilled wire.
For Sale.
Original caption:
Switzerland In Miniature - A Short Timelapse Film If you're in the mountains, looking down, you see so many things happening. Especially in places like Lucerne or Schwyz where course ships sailing back and forth through the lake, fishermen trying to catch something and cars crawling up and down the steep roads. I wanted to portrait this like you are watching an ants hill, which gives such a funny perspective on things. Enjoy.
Film by Pirmin Henseler pirmin-henseler.ch
Music by Tiny Music premiumbeat.com/artist/tiny-music
To answer some photographers questions. The film is shot on a Sony A7III in 6K with the Canon EF 70-200 f2.8, Rokinon 135 f2 and Sigma Art 20 f1.4. Interval 1 image p/s with an intervalometer. Images were processed in Adobe Lightroom and LRTimelapse, while the film was edited in After Effects and FCPX.
Big thanks to all my friends who I was allowed to accompany and photograph during their different free time activities and Oliver for borrowing me the Canon Lens.
Pangolin going after insects on a tree
ANTS VS FUSULINIDS
Fusulinids are an extinct order of foraminifera, a kind of shelled amoeba-ish creature that leaves behind microfossils which geologists love to find because they are very intensively studied and useful in giving an age to a rock formation and in many cases, finding petroleum. Anyway… fusulinids were common in the Paleozoic, first appearing in the Silurian but unhappily, they are among the many creatures that didn’t make it across the Permian/Triassic boundary.
While most one-celled creatures tend to be quite small, aka microscopic, fusulinids built themselves nice little microgranular carbonate shells (also called “tests”), and some grew to the outrageous size of, well, 5 cm. Not bad for one cell!
The lazy person’s means of collecting fossil fusulinids is by letting ants do the work for you. For some reason, in areas where there are upper Paleozoic rocks in the shallow subsurface, ants have a knack of pitching fusulinids tests out of their nests so that they create little ant hills of fusulinids fossils ready for us to scoop up and sample. Ant hill sampling is used as a legitimate geologic collecting procedure. The fusulinids in the photo with this post were collected by me in Central Texas decades ago from ant mounds, and internet sources report similar fusulinid ant hills from all over the Midwest, New Mexico, and even New Jersey.
Why do ants “detest’ fusulinids in their nests? Perhaps the rice grain sized fossils are annoying, or perhaps they are preferentially ousted from the nests to use in constructing world class ant hills? While it would be interesting to envision that ants are playing out an eon-aged vendetta against fusulinids, the oldest fossil ants are only about 92 million years in age, well past the Permian extinction.
Whatever the reason, if you’re strolling in the hills and come across a small hill of fusulinids, smile and thank your lucky ants for their dedication to geologic sampling.
Annie R Graphic: I scanned my fusulinids and added the ants. Note: no ant was injured in the scanning process.
Others who find these critters rather fun: http://blogs.agu.org/mountainbeltway/2012/06/27/permian-fusulinids-from-west-texas/ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6666/abs/391447a0.html http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1446/report.pdf
Enjoy the speed ! critters captured at 1000 frames per seconds. All species are from New Caledonia, one of the world's first biodiversity hotspot. Shot and cut by myself - mostly from various documentaries I filmed the past 3 years. Thanks for watching ! Music from Camille Saint-Saëns : Danse Macabre
Lethal combat
Some hundred million years ago a pair of ants from two different species was so preoccupied with their savage battle somewhere on or by a Cretaceous tree in what is now Burma that they failed to notice the oncoming rush of sap flowing from a wound in the bark, maybe caused by a rampaging dinosaur sharpening its claws. They were engulfed and entombed and the sap turned slowly into amber as it lost its volatiles and formed polymer chains. Their gladiatorial moment was thus preserved for posterity, currently incarnated in the shape of the American Museum of Natural History's collection.
Loz
Image credit: American Museum of Natural History
Falling with style
In the treetops of the tropical forest systems of Central and South America lives quite a curious species of ant. It is very much ant-like in appearance, except for its relatively long legs, wide head, and flattened abdomen. What kind of adaptation could have resulted in these features?
The answer was accidentally discovered by researcher Stephen Yanoviak of the University of Texas in 2004, who found himself covered in the ants (Cephalotes atratus) while he was high up in a tree working on an unrelated study. As he brushed them off his clothes, he noticed that they didn’t fall straight down to the ground. Instead, they seemed to turn mid-fall and orient themselves back to the tree trunk (you can see it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YFt2L2GOMg).
Intrigued, Yanoviak decided to look into this further. Utilising a high speed camera and some white nail polish (for identification purposes), he and his team dropped individual ants from the canopy. A little unorthodox, maybe, but they made some fascinating findings. The first stages of the ant’s descent are spent in free-fall, during which they splay their legs like a parachute to increase drag and slow their fall. The ants then visually lock on to the tree: a task made easier given the typically lighter-coloured bark of tropical trees, which contrast sharply with the darker background foliage. Using their hind legs as rudders, they are then are able execute hairpin turns of up to 180 degrees, to direct their trajectory back towards the trunk – and safety.
A passing monkey, bird, or even a gust of wind is enough to knock an ant out of its tree. The forest understorey is treacherous for a creature less than 1cm long – it is a dark place of dead leaf litter, ground-dwelling predators, and even floods during the rainy season. Worse, landing in the understorey may take the ant out of range of the chemical trails it would use to navigate back to the nest, a situation in which it would quickly be eaten. This then provides a compelling reason for the adaptation of gliding – a trait shared in other arboreal animals like frogs, snakes, and even spiders (as discovered last year). And it works: gliding ants have an 85% change of landing in the same tree they fell from, compared to 5% if they had simply dropped like other ants. Given this, it’s not surprising that the ants also use this adaptation to evade predators, often launching themselves from branches if approached by a malevolent stranger.
VP
Image Credit: Graham Wise (https://flic.kr/p/t7QyyT) Reference: http://bit.ly/1ospLJv
These striking images, captured by Bence Maté, show leaf cutter ants, scientifically known as Atta ants, collecting leaves and twigs in Costa Rica.
Atta ants (of which there are at least 17 species), although small, have a massive effect on ecosystems, with ecologists estimating that Atta colonies may in fact cut 12-17% of the total leaf production of tropical rain forests.
Interestingly, this bountiful collection of leaves are not for the ants dinner; instead, the leaf fragments serve as a growing medium for a special fungus called Leucocoprinus fungus (which is found nowhere but in ant colonies as of yet).
The worker ants bring their leaves and other vegetation back to the nest where the plant material is chewed into a pulp. After this, colony minding working ants then apply faecal droplets containing digestive enzymes which helps form the substrate for fungus formation. The fungus is essentially a life support system for these leaf cutter ant colonies where ants pluck the nutrient-rich swellings known as gongylidia to feed the colony's larvae.
Photographer: https://www.facebook.com/BenceMatesPhotography
Zombie Ant
This ant has been completely taken over by a fungus. It's dead now, but the fungus has been in control for some time.
The fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) has a complex relationship with the carpenter ant (Camponotus leonardi). Yeast-like spores of the fungus attach to a live ant, and gradually work their way into its body. Once there, they modify the chemistry of the ant's nervous system, and change its behaviour. At this stage the ant is effectively a zombie, and all its actions benefit the fungal invader.
The zombie ant climbs up plants above its former colony, and sinks its mandibles into the thick veins on the underside of leaves. Once the zombie ant is attached, the fungus rapidly attacks its jaw muscles so it can't let go, leaving it dangling on the underside of the leaf. The fungus then changes mode, and kills the ant. It grows tendril-like hyphae through the ants body, bursting out of the exoskeleton and anchoring the ant to the underside of the leaf. (The image is flipped 180º)
The fungus then grows a large 'fruiting' structure, which bursts through the back of the ant's head, and hangs down from the leaf. The fruiting structure ripens, and eventually scatters its spores on the ground and ants below, where a new generation of zombies are infected.
This specific fungus-ant relationship is found in Thailand and Brazil, although numerous other examples of 'zombie insects' can be found throughout the world. Don't worry though - there aren't any human zombie fungi.
Image credit: http://goo.gl/KKjMsU
A quick video: http://goo.gl/OObekX A bit more detail: http://goo.gl/PR3hWm The fungus also has predators...: http://goo.gl/z78gP
Large ant in amber Baltic amber (aka succinite) is 44 million years old, dating from the warm Eocene period. It is found in Poland and Russia, though some deposits far away in Saxony seem to represent redeposited Baltic material carried by rivers in the Miocene. It is mainly found in Poland, the Baltic states and Russia, and is made of the fossilised resin of several tree species, probably related to the Japanese umbrella pine. Of course, we're fascinated by its inclusions, and Baltic amber has the widest variety of species represented, including this large ant. Loz Image credit: Anders L Damgaard
