This 99-million-year-old insect had a mouth like a drinking straw, nearly twice as long as its body. Its purpose was even stranger than it looked | Discover Wildlife

Approximately 99 million years ago, when dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth, a tiny creature became trapped in tree resin, which then hardened and turned into amber. Now, the fossil preserved within has allowed scientists to identify and describe a new species of prehistoric insect.

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The research was conducted by scientists from the School of Zoology and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University, Israel, in collaboration with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. The findings were published in the journal Insects.

The researchers examined insect fossils belonging to the ancient family of planthoppers called Neazoniidae – including 13 specimens preserved in amber from Myanmar.

The newly-described species – Cretodorus noonoo, or ‘Noo-Noo’ – as well as its close relatives, had exceptionally long and flexible mouthparts, reaching nearly twice the length of the insect’s body. This extraordinary biological adaptation is unknown among any of its living relatives today, who tend to have mouthparts structured like a simple needle – allowing them to pierce plant tissues and suck fluids from them.

In the ancient insects, the mouthparts’ surface was densely covered with folds at an angle of 90°. By reconstructing their internal structure with the assistance of high-resolution micro-computed tomography, the researchers found that these folds weren’t just there as ornamentation but were part of the structure itself. They likely gave the mouthparts flexibility and prevented them from kinking or collapsing – much like a bendy drinking straw.

In several specimens, the mouthparts were preserved in a bent position, further confirming that hypothesis.

Sap specialists

Why would a small insect need such long mouthparts? When it comes to extant species, a butterfly comes to mind, with its long, flexible proboscis used to drink nectar. But the researchers don’t think this applies to the Noo-Noo: its mouthparts pointed backward and functioned as a piercing-and-sucking system, not really suitable for drinking nectar. To further support this, no evidence of pollen was found on the ancient insects’ bodies.

The explanation proposed by the researchers is that the Noo-Noo was a specialist in sucking sap from trees. More rigid mouthparts couldn’t reach deep inside the crevices in tree bark – but long and flexible ones could have snaked through narrow cracks and guided the piercing organs at the tip. These organs had two grooved lobes that likely opened during feeding, anchoring the long mouthparts to the walls of the crack.

Wider implications

This discovery could also be significant in our understanding of Cretaceous forests. Long or corrugated feeding structures appear in several unrelated insect groups from this period – suggesting the forests of the time were rich in thick-barked trees.

As noted in the study, resin-producing forests of the Cretaceous were also associated with evidence of recurrent fires, and trees in fire-prone environments often develop thicker bark. The researchers cautiously suggest such conditions might have influenced the development of such feeding structures in several insect species.

“The discovery of a new species that lived approximately 99 million years ago, gives us an extraordinary glimpse into the insect world of the age of the dinosaurs,” said Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou of the School of Zoology, Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and New Environmental School at Tel Aviv University.

“This is therefore not simply the addition of another name to the tree of life, but another piece of the puzzle that enables us to reconstruct what ecosystems looked like and how they functioned tens of millions of years ago.”

Read the full findings here.

Top image: the newly described species, Cretoduros noonoo. Credit: Dolev Fabrikant