SAEDNEWS: An array of perfectly preserved insects and even a spider’s web, encased in 112-million-year-old amber, have been found in a quarry in the Amazon rainforest.
In a groundbreaking expedition, Xavier Delclos and his team from the University of Barcelona, Spain, explored the Genoveva quarry in Ecuador’s Oriente Basin in 2022, after hearing reports of fossilized tree resin, or amber, in the region.
The amber originates from Araucaria conifers that thrived when Ecuador was part of the Gondwana supercontinent. While most amber forms underground, some above-ground resin traps insects and other life forms, creating bio-inclusions.
From 60 above-ground amber pieces collected, over a third contained ancient life forms—including flies, wasps, midges, beetles, mosquitoes, and even a spider web—dating back to the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era. Delclos notes this is the first discovery of Mesozoic amber with insect and spider bio-inclusions across South America, featuring species previously unknown to science.
These insects coexisted with dinosaurs in a humid equatorial forest, where water bodies were likely abundant. Some mosquitoes were blood-feeding, potentially interacting with avian or non-avian dinosaurs.
Delclos humorously warns that visiting the ancient site would have required insect repellent and “a way to escape from a carnivorous dinosaur or two.”
However, any dinosaur DNA that might have existed in mosquito blood trapped in the amber was long destroyed by resin chemicals, ruling out a real-life Jurassic Park—at least with today’s technology.
This discovery not only rewrites South America’s prehistoric ecosystem history but also offers a rare window into Cretaceous biodiversity, revealing the delicate interactions of insects, plants, and dinosaurs millions of years ago.
