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The dominance of ants in the terrestrial biosphere has few equals among animals today, but this was not always the case. The oldest ants appear in the fossil record 100 million years ago, but given the scarcity of their fossils, it is presumed they were relatively minor components of Mesozoic insect life. The ant fossil record consists of two primary types of fossils, each with inherent biases: as imprints in rock and as inclusions in fossilized resins (amber). New imaging technology allows ancient ant fossils to be examined in ways never before possible. This is particularly helpful because it can be difficult to distinguish true ants from non-ants in Mesozoic fossils. Fossil discoveries continue to inform our understanding of ancient ant morphological diversity, as well as provide insights into their paleobiology.
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Download Supplemental Figures 1-8 as a PDF (also reproduced below). Supplemental Figure 1: Distribution of all Cretaceous localities with fossil Formicidae (maps modified from Blakey RC. 2011. Library of Paleogeography, Colorado Plateau Geosystems, Inc. Mollewide Globes), Late Early Cretaceous (105 mya). http://cpgeosystems.com/105moll.jpg. Supplemental Figure 2: Distribution of all Cenozoic localities with fossil Formicidae (maps modified from Blakey RC. 2011. Library of Paleogeography, Colorado Plateau Geosystems, Inc. Mollewide Globes), Eocene (50 mya). http://cpgeosystems.com/50moll.jpg. Supplemental Figure 3: Examples of amber ants. (a) Tetraponera sp., in Eocene Oise amber; (b) Electromyrmex klebsi, in Eocene Baltic amber; (c) Gesomyrmex hoernesi, in Oligocene Bitterfeld amber; (d) Cephalotes serratus, in Miocene Dominican amber. Images courtesy of V. Perrichot/AntWeb. Supplemental Figure 4: Examples of ant imprint fossils. (a) Oecophylla longiceps, in Eocene bituminous claystone from Messel, Germany; (b) Gesomyrmex breviceps, from Messel, Germany; (c) Dolichoderus vectensis, in Eocene limestone from Bembridge, Isle of Wight, United Kingdom. Images courtesy of G. Dlussky. Supplemental Figure 5: (a) A worker ant from 95 Myo amber of Ethiopia. The fossil is curled, which made the observation of many diagnostic features and thus the identification impossible using conventional light microscopes. (b) Three-dimensional virtual reconstruction in phase contrast synchrotron microtomography, followed by a virtual dissection, allows access to all morphological features, as detailed here with the head and mandibles, and identification of a Dolichoderinae (taxon currently under study). Images courtesy of V. Perrichot/C. Soriano/P. Tafforeau/ESRF. Supplemental Figure 6: A "false ant" (Hymenoptera: Falsiformicidae) in mid-Cretaceous (100 Myo) Charentese amber, SW France, showing geniculate antennae with a short scape and a petiole broadly attached to abdominal segment III. Three-dimensional virtual reconstruction in phase contrast synchrotron microtomography, wings partially removed. Image courtesy of V. Perrichot/C. Soriano/P.Tafforeau/ESRF. Supplemental Figure 7: Titanomyrma similima, a giant ant imprint fossil in 47 Myo claystone from Messel, Germany. Image V. Perrichot/AntWeb. Supplemental Figure 8: Percentage of extinct genera as a total of all ant genera known to exist at a particular time period; for genera that are extant, they are considered to remain present from their first appearance in a fossil deposit even if no representatives of those genera are known from younger deposits.