An ancient, colorful, metallic-looking creature resembling a robot has astonished scientists as it has been found perfectly preserved in a rare Cretaceous amber in Hungary.
The creature, scientifically named Alienopterix santonicus, is… a cockroach, but a “monster” cockroach that lived alongside dinosaurs.
Graphic illustrations by scientists depict a creature with vibrant colors, but a newly published study in the journal Biologia indicates it also has a shimmering metallic appearance, resembling a lost robot in the realm of ancient monsters.
The colorful and metallic “monster” cockroach from the Cretaceous – (Photo: Márton Zsoldos).
The precious amber piece that holds it was excavated from a tunnel of the Ajka-Csingervolgy coal mine in Hungary, known for its rich deposits of arthropod inclusions.
Dating results indicate that the amber piece, and certainly the body of the strange cockroach inside, dates back approximately 83-86 million years, during the late Cretaceous period.
It belongs to the family Alienopteridae, an extinct family previously only known from North America and northern Myanmar, and it is also the only known family within the superfamily Umenocoleoidea.
Additionally, it is the only family that survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, triggered by the Chicxulub impactor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Amber piece preserving the creature’s body – (Photo: Biologia).
Paleontologist Márton Szabó from the Hungarian Natural History Museum and Eötvös Loránd University, the lead author of the study, stated: “Cockroaches are one of the most dominant insect groups in the ecosystems of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras.”
“Emerging in the late Carboniferous period, they are considered the ancestors of termites, mantises, and Chresmoda (an extinct genus of insects). Throughout their 320 million years of evolutionary history, cockroaches have adapted to various ecosystems and developed high levels of ecological diversity, behavior, and morphology,” Dr. Szabó was quoted by Sci-News.
