Researchers from Canada, China and the United States described the past crab period of 100 million years old from the chalk age of crab age – an oldest known real crabs. The article of scientists is published in the journal Science Advances.
A bowl of amber was discovered in 2015 by miners near the city of Myanik in Myanmar. They sold it to the jeweler in the Chinese city of Tenchun, in the necklace of which researchers noticed him. With the help of X-ray microtomography, they managed to create a three-dimensional reconstruction of the crab, the size of which did not exceed five millimeters.
The fossil crustacean received the name of Cretapsara athanata – “the immortal spirit of clouds and water of the chalk period.” This is the most well-preserved real crab (Brachyura) – and the most ancient. “Cretapsara Athanata is the most well-preserved fossil crab from ever open. It has soft fabrics, such as mustaches, parts of the oral apparatus, large facetful eyes and even gills,” one of the researchers, the postcard of Harvard University Javier Luke.
Fossil Crab is quite strongly on modern green crabs, researchers say. According to their hypothesis, the crab found was a young person of freshwater or amphibian species. It is also possible that he migrated for breeding, as some modern species do. Also, scientists seem likely that he knew how to climb trees.
Previous fossil crabs indicated that these crustaceans went to the land and adapted to fresh water about 50-75 million years ago. The data of the “molecular clock” indicate for a period of 125 million years. “A new fossil and its mid-solitary age allows us to close the gap between the molecular divergence and the existing paleontological chroniclel of the crabs,” Luke emphasizes. In order to get into the amber resin, Cretapsara Athanata was to die in a stralywater or freshwater environment near the shore or the mouth of the river. Thus, the crabs came to the land – or became amphibians – at least 100 million years ago, which is much earlier than previous estimates.