Scientists have made an incredible find of a tick wrapped in spider silk and then swallowed by amber back in the Cretaceous stop .
The discovery was made by German collector Patrick Müller in Myanmar . expert at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and the University of Kansas later confirmed the determination as date back about 100 million years . The determination have been published in the journalCretaceous Research .
It appears that the check mark was wrapped up by the wanderer in place of having a tasty collation . But when a drop of amber fell on the tick , it was preserved until the modern Clarence Day in stunning shape .
" Ticks already are known from the Burmese amber – but it ’s unusual to bump one wrap in wanderer silk , ” Paul Selden from the University of Kansas , one of the study ’s co - authors , say in astatement . “ We ’re not sure if the spider wrapped it in guild to rust it later or if it was to get it out of the way and stop it from squirm and destroying its web . That ’s something spiders do . "
Findings like this are rarefied ( although this is n’t the first ticking found in amber , and we bed you ’re dying to know whether it would be possible tocreate a real - lifeJurassic Park ) as tick are n’t broadly establish on tree diagram trunks , and amber is tree rosin . So it ’s not entirely clear-cut how it end up here , but it must have somehow rule its way trapped in this spider ’s web .
“ peradventure some thing can escape after some struggle , so the spider rushes to it out from hiding and wrap it in swaths of silk to immobilise it , to stop it escaping or destroying the web , ” said Selden . “ This prevents prey from hitting back – stinging or biting – once it ’s wrap in silk it ca n’t move , and then the spider can bite it and come in gastric fluid to eat it or venom to subdue it as well . ”
Interestingly , this is the first time a check has been institute enclose in a spider ’s web in the fossil record book . Those spider did n’t normally opt for tick as part of their diet , so the determination is quite strange . Modern spider occasionally do prey on tick , though .
From the silk itself , the researchers are not sure what type of spider it was that caught the ticking . However , it ’s imagine that the wanderer ’s behaviour was quite coarse when equate to its more forward-looking counterparts .
