#Prehistoric Hell Ant Trapped in Amber Is Stuck Eating Its Prey 99 Million Years Later

It might be time for 2020 to let up. First there were the murder hornets and then there were the nuclear cannibal ants. Now, scientists have discovered the frightening “hell ant.” Thankfully, the hell ant has been extinct for over 99 million years, so we don’t have to worry about it coming to town any time soon, unless these scientists decide to pull a Jurassic Park experiment and bring it back to life. With that being said, the prehistoric insect was discovered in amber while still mauling it prey.

When most people think of amber and scientific discoveries, they think of the mosquito from Jurassic Park. The mosquito looks perfectly normal and non-threatening in its resting form, which is the complete opposite of the hell ant, who has an extinct relative of the cockroach in its grasp. Scientists say it’s the first time that they’ve witnessed the newly discovered species, aka Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri, feeding. “Fossilized behavior is exceedingly rare, predation especially so,” says Phillip Barden, who studies social insect evolution at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

The hell ant has a “scythe-like” mouth that looks like it could do some major damage. As far as ants go, the “hell ant” is really just a drop in the bucket, along with the recently discovered nuclear cannibal ants. Scientists believe they have found over 12,500 different species of ants so far and think there are at least 10,000 more that have yet to be discovered and studied. However, none of the ants walking around on Earth at this moment look like the mysterious hell ant.

The new hell ants were found in amber deposits from Myanmar, Canada, and France. The mouth of these particular ants “are unlike that of nearly all insects alive today.” The hell ant “used its lower mandible to move upwards and pin its prey to the horn-like paddle above.” Other species of hell ants also have this horn, but scientists were unsure what it was used for until now. Phillip Barden went on to say, “As paleontologists, we speculate about the function of ancient adaptations using available evidence, but to see an extinct predator caught in the act of capturing its prey is invaluable.”

The mouth on the hell ant is believed to have been a step in the evolutionary process. Phillip Barden notes, “This fossil reveals the mechanism behind what we might call an ‘evolutionary experiment,’ and although we see numerous such experiments in the fossil record, we often don’t have a clear picture of the evolutionary pathway that led to them.” Now, they do, thanks to the scary hell ant eating a prehistoric relative of the cockroach. It’s believed that the hell ants were not able to move their heads all that well, which means they probably caught most of their prey while facing down. 2020 has provided some truly weird stuff, but the hell ants are right up there with the weirdest. Thankfully they’re extinct. This news was originally reported by Science Alert.

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