Microbes 100M Years Old Found In Termite Guts

viyh writes with coverage on MSNBC of the discovery of ancient microbes fossilized in the gut of a termite. "One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open. The resin of a pine tree slowly enveloped its body and the contents of its gut. In what is now the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, the resin fossilized and was buried until it was chipped out of an amber mine. The resin had seeped into the termite's wound and preserved even the microscopic organisms in its gut. These microbes are the forebears of the microbes that live in the guts of today's termites and help them digest wood. ... The amber preserved the microbes with exquisite detail, including internal features like the nuclei. ... Termites are related to cockroaches and split from them in evolutionary time at about the same time the termite in the amber was trapped."

Comments

Amber preservation

[zippthorne]

Seems even better than mummification for preserving the dead. We should figure out how to make it, and stick some creatures from our own time in it, including larger specimens for future paleontologists to ponder over. Like, famous politicians, as a reward for their service.

Re:Amber preservation

[Opportunist]

Like, famous politicians, as a reward for their service.

Do we have to wait 'til they die? I know a few individuals that I'd love to preserve that way right now. For their incredible service, of course...

Re:Amber preservation

[RichardJenkins]

Why not just encode the genomes of as many species as possible, and bury it somewhere geologically inactive - like the moon - with a big x painted on top of it. Would probably be cheaper.

Re:Amber preservation

[mangu]

Seems even better than mummification for preserving the dead

It probably wouldn't work for anything bigger than a termite. When I was a kid I had a tarantula encased in acrylic resin. After a year or so, the spider body started shrinking and in the end there was only a dust-filled hole in the plastic.

Even if it was totally encased in the plastic and isolated from the outside, the tarantula had enough bacteria in its guts to decompose it.

Re:Amber preservation

[MartinSchou]

Would degrade in sunlight.

No, encase it in a huge container ... something obviously not naturally occuring. Maybe a huge slab of obsidian. Make it really stand out ... say 4 times as wide as deep and 9 times as high as it is deep.

Then you bury that at the bottom of a large crater on the moon. Deep down so it doesn't just end up surfacing on its own.

Re:Amber preservation

[Opportunist]

If it's first tried on them, why not? I could see this become a hit in prime time TV! Actually, I'd really love to see those "harmless" ways of torture be first of all tried on people applauding their use for an hour or two, then discuss it with them how harmless it was.

Yes, but it's in Chickens, not frogs

[anotheregomaniac]

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1026340/Jurassic-Park-comes-true-How-scientists-bringing-dinosaurs-life-help-humble-chicken.html According to Jack Horner, professor of palaeontology at Montana State University, the answer is an unequivocal yes. He says: "Of course we can bring them back to life. Their ancestral DNA is still present. "The science is there. I don't think there are any barriers, other than the philosophical."

It's the gut microbes that made them termites

[ynotds]

If you, as I, accept Lynn Margulis's hypothesis, parasitic and symbiotic interactions with microbes play a much stronger role in driving evolutionary diversification than "random" mutations of the genome.

The only reasonable ref I could find quickly is from 1991: Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis.

Re:Screw that!

[Hurricane78]

And it might just be possible, that it really tastes like chicken! :D

Re:but is there any dinosaur dna in there?

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Well, I guess if you _are_ going to clone dinosaurs (and I'm not saying that you should), and you want your new best friend to have a fighting chance of survival, you might actually also need to clone the ecosystem of microbes and bacteria that would have lived in an on it back in its day. If you can find some dinosaur bacteria.