Paleontologists have just discovered 10 new species of ancient mammal thanks to the tiny mound-building insects
Across the western United States, the industrious insects known as harvester ants are often cast as pests. These antsand live in large sediment mounds, and they can deliver nasty stings to creatures they perceive as threats. A mound can last for decades and, to the chagrin of some property owners, the land up to 30 feet away is protectively picked clean of vegetation.
The scientific bounty these ants can accumulate is staggering. Examining 19 harvester ant mounds on one property in Nebraska, researchers recently found more than 6,000 microfossils—each no more than a few millimeters wide—from ancient mammals. The specimens include small teeth and jaw fragments that represent nine new species of rodents and a new species of insect-eating, shrew-like animal., a new fossil species of insect-eating, shrew-like mammal.
“Harvester mounds are like archaeologists’ and paleontologists’ best friends,” says National Geographic Explorer Benjamin Schoville, an archaeologist at Australia’s University of Queensland who wasn’t involved with the study., paleontologist John Bell Hatcher advised collectors to frequent local anthills, “as they will almost always yield a goodly number of mammal teeth.” Hatcher’s preferred method for nabbing teeth—sieving the sediment with a flour sifter—seems to have worked well.
The Nebraskan ant mounds also yielded a partial jaw fragment and tooth from a bat, but the fossil is too fragmentary to assign it to a particular species.The study also demonstrated just how far the ants will travel. In one experiment, Schoville’s team arranged beads in concentric rings around several mounds. The farthest of these rings lay 48 meters from the peaks.
“Sometimes some people see, you know, a bit of antagonism between academic paleontologists and landowners when it comes to fossils,” Boyd says. “But this is a good example of how we can all work together and accomplish important scientific research.”When these fossils originally formed—between 37 million and 32 million years ago—the Great Plains of what is now the central U.S. were warmer, wetter, and more forested, says Korth, the new study’s lead author.
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