The insect, perfectly preserved in a piece of amber from Myanmar, or Burma, was closely related to praying mantises, according to the study reported in Geologica Carpathica.
The roach wasn’t all that huge for a dino-era bug — not even an inch long — but it was a fearsome nocturnal hunter nonetheless, reported Peter Vršanský from the Geological Institute in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Günter Bechly from the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany.
“The unique adaptations such as strongly elongated extremities and freely movable head on a long neck suggest that these animals were pursuit predators,” they said in their paper.
NatureWorldNews.com reports that the insects lived in the early Cretaceous period, when several predatory cockroach-like lineages came into existence.
All of the roaches in those lineages are now extinct, except for one: the praying mantis, close cousins to cockroaches.
From Discovery News
No comments:
Post a Comment