10
September 2017
By Josh
Gabbatiss
A newly
discovered species of prehistoric “hell ant” had anatomy that lived up to its
demonic name, including a lethal feeding apparatus reinforced with metal.
Hell ants
are an extinct lineage from the Cretaceous Period. Instead of regular
mouthparts, they had upward-facing blades.
No living
species have such facial anatomy. However, the hairs around hell ants’ mouths
are reminiscent of hairs on modern trap-jaw ants that cause their mouths to
snap shut when triggered. This has led to speculation that the hell ants’
mouthparts worked in a similar way.
Some also
had a horn-like appendage that jutted out over their tusk-like mandibles. This
includes the new species, Linguamyrmex
vladi, which Phillip
Barden at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark and
his colleagues found preserved in 98-million-year-old amber.
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