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Tiny 'immortal' crab entombed in amber discovered in a first of its kind - Livescience.com
Oct 25, 2021 1 min, 13 secs

For the first time ever, scientists have discovered an "immortal" crab fossilized in amber.

Arthropods, like insects, spiders, scorpions and millipedes, show up preserved in amber on a fairly regular basis in the fossil record.

Most crabs, on the other hand, spend their lives in the water — not nesting in trees or buzzing through the forest.

"It's not very often you come across an aquatic animal in amber," Javier Luque, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University and co-author of the study, told Live Science.

At just a fraction of an inch (2 millimeters) across, the fossil crab is a minuscule but exquisitely preserved specimen.

Based on the shape of the legs and carapace, they determined that the tiny crustacean belonged to the same lineage as modern-day "true" crabs.

So-called false crabs — including hermit crabs, king crabs and porcelain crabs — are members of a group called Anomura, and they can be distinguished by the fact that they walk on three pairs of legs rather than four like true crabs in the group Brachyura. .

Scientists believe that crab-like body plans — in both true and false crabs — have independently evolved at least five times in Earth's history, researchers wrote in March in the journal BioEssays.

Northern Myanmar has some of the richest fossil amber mines in the world.

Originally published on Live Science

Joanna Thompson is an intern for Live Science with a deep love for nature

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