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Science 1 September 1967:
Vol. 157. no. 3792, pp. 1038 - 1040
DOI: 10.1126/science.157.3792.1038
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Articles

The First Mesozoic Ants

Edward O. Wilson 1, Frank M. Carpenter 1, and William L. Brown Jr. 2

1 Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
2 Department of Entomology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; and Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Two worker ants preserved in amber of Upper Cretaceous age have been found in New Jersey. They are the first undisputed remains of social insects of Mesozoic age, extending the existence of social life in insects back to approximately 100 million years. They are also the earliest known fossils that can be assigned with certainty to aculeate Hymenoptera. The species, Sphecomyrma freyi, is considered to represent a new subfamily (Sphecomyrminae), more primitive than any previously known ant group. It forms a near-perfect link between certain nonsocial tiphiid wasps and the most primitive myrmecioid ants.


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