Researchers revisit Danish 1960s amber find, discover rare new species of gnat

A Danish amber collector’s find on a wild North Sea shore in the 1960’s has proved to be of surprising significance. University of Copenhagen researchers have discovered that the roughly 40-million-year-old piece of amber contains the first fossil of a rare species of gnat from a genus thought to have lived only in Japan and the US.

From the study: Eocene amber provides the first fossil record and bridges distributional gap in the rare genus Robsonomyia (Diptera: Keroplatidae)

The first fossil of a rare and never-before-studied species of gnat, Robsonomyia henningseni, which was found in a piece of Baltic amber along Denmark’s North Sea coast in the 1960’s, has proved to be of even greater worth than first thought.Having recently been retrieved from the Natural History Museum of Denmark’s 70,000-piece amber collection for a […]


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