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THE OLDEST ANTS ARE CRETACEOUS, NOT EOCENE: COMMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2012

David Grimaldi and
Donat Agosti
David Grimaldi*
Affiliation:
Division of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, United States 10024-5192
Donat Agosti
Affiliation:
Division of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, United States 10024-5192
*
1 Author to whom all corresponding should be addressed (E-mail: grimaldi@amnh.org).
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Extract

The recent paper by Poinar et al. (1999), entitled “New amber deposit provides evidence of early paleogene extinctions, paleoclimates, and past distributions,” reports a new deposit of fossiliferous amber from the Eocene of British Columbia. This report of a significant discovery by one of the co-authors (Bruce Archibald) is compromised by unexplained statements that ants in this amber are the “earliest unequivocal ants.” They cited unpublished cladograms by Cesare Baroni Urbani as the source of information that showed that previous reports of ants in Cretaceous amber were not really ants.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
The Canadian Entomologist , Volume 132 , Issue 5 , October 2000, pp. 691 - 693
Copyright
Copyright © Entomological Society of Canada 2000

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