Roughly 115 million years ago, when the ancient supercontinent Gondwana was breaking apart, a mushroom fell into a river and began an improbable journey. Its ultimate fate as a mineralized fossil preserved in limestone in northeast Brazil makes it a scientific wonder, INHS scientists report in the journal PLOS ONE. Read the press release on […]
News
Digitization efforts make wealth of INHS collections more accessible
The Illinois Natural History Survey, a division of the Prairie Research Institute, is home to over 9 million biological specimens, including plants, insects, fish, reptiles, and fossils. Learn how we’re digitizing these specimens to make them accessible to everyone in this article from the Daily Illini.
Froghopper from Montana
Our team collected many interesting new fossils during fieldwork in Montana last month. Here team member Susan McIntyre poses with a beautifully preserved spittlebug wing she discovered at one of the excavation sites in the Oligocene Renova Formation. Spittlebugs (also called froghoppers) are insects of the superfamily Cercopoidea (order Hemiptera). They feed by sucking juices […]
Preserving a fragile history
ALDER, MONTANA – I drive slowly over the hilly terrain in Fossil Basin and park near the remnants of an old campsite. In the 1950s and early 1960s, botanist Herman Becker camped here and collected fossil insects and plants from the Renova Formation’s paper shales. Go behind the scenes with M. Jared Thomas in this article from the U […]
Drawing insights from ancient plants
ALDER, MONTANA – I’m sitting near the top of our fossil excavation site in southwest Montana, my hammer and shovel ready. I have a perfect view of the mountains. A wall of fossil-laden shale lies before me, and I’m ready to dig in. Go behind the scenes with Danielle Ruffatto in this article from the […]
The fossils of Madison County (Montana)
ALDER, MONTANA – Standing at the foot of the mountains, I look to the east. It’s still early and I have hiked up here alone to gather my thoughts. I can see why they call this “Big Sky Country.” The tree-covered foothills of the mountains behind me give way to rolling scrubland. Stunted trees mark the edges […]
New study reveals evolutionary patterns of grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids over the past 300 million years
INHS orthopterist and paleontologist Sam Heads was co-author on a recently published study determining the evolutionary relationships of the grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets. The current study is based on genetics rather than morphological characteristics. The Origin of Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets: A New Study Resolves the Evolutionary Tree of the Orthoptera
Decades-old amber collection offers new views of an ancient world
INHS Paleontologist Sam Heads, Jared Thomas, and Yinan Wang found a new pygmy locust embedded in amber. In a paper released today, the species was described and named Electrotettix attenboroughi, in honor of Sir David Attenborough. Attenborough narrated a video about their research. To find out more, read this article by the U of I News Bureau.
INHS entomologists comment on fossil stick insects
Following the discovery of fossil stick insects by a team of Chinese and French scientists, INHS Paleontologist Sam Heads and Illinois State Entomologist Chris Dietrich were contacted by National Geographic to comment. Heads told National Geographic that the discovery of fossilized plant mimicking insects, “is yet more tantalizing evidence of early insect-plant coevolution.”
Ancient ‘fig wasp’ lived tens of millions of years before figs
INHS Paleontologist Sam Heads found an ancient fig wasp that pre-dates any known fig trees. According to Heads, “This is a tiny parasitic wasp, it’s the smallest fossil wasp found in this particular deposit and it’s the oldest representative of its family. More importantly, it’s possible that this wasp was fig-associated, which is interesting because it’s Early […]