Cockroaches have been despised for centuries and have been often synonymous with unhygienic conditions and disease. So when something new have been attributed to these critters, it is often regarded with awe and contempt with equal measure since most will ask who would like to research on such a creature.
A new research has revealed that a particular species of cockroach has started crawling after a gap of of 49 million years. The shocking discovery was made for the genus Ectobius which is once again crawling after a very long gap.
The Ectobius cockroach was a very common cockroach which had inhabited the planet some 49 million year ago. It inhabited a huge tract of land from Northern Europe to the southernmost part of Africa.
Scientists have discovered four very old species of Ectobius in the Green River formation near Rifle, Colorado. Ectobius species have been unearthed by researchers within deposits which were five million years older than Baltic amber. Baltic amber itself dates to about 44 million years ago.
Guardian of fossil arthropods at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington Conrad Labandeira, said: “Nearly 65 years ago, several entomologists in the northeastern US noted that four species of Ectobius were present in North America”.
He further informed that the four species of Ectobius have always deemed to be the first species that lived in North America. However it has been of late proven that the links of such species were nearly 50 million years old in North America.
I’m assuming this is what happens when you paste an article from a Chinese journalist into Google Translate followed by pasting the resulting text to your blog without proof-reading.
Huh? “started crawling after a gap…?” Were they walking or flying during the gap? Maybe dancing?