Amber contains an insect exoskeleton, along with a mushroom and a hair: ©Natalie Keshing

Researchers say it provides a rare glimpse at interactions of ancient life. The insect likely shed its skin quickly to avoid being entombed in sap.

Usually most people don’t grow a true affinity for bugs, spiders, or insects; yet their so tiny. The idiom ‘Wouldn’t hurt a fly’. I don’t particularly like flies because their pesty and I don’t like them landing on my food. I don’t mind spiders, bugs, and insects. I’ve been catching them my entire life. Trying to study their behavior and their way of life, these peculiar diminutive creatures go way back.

In a moment of fright, it’s often said that you’ll ‘jump right out of your skin’ – but for one ancient insect, that’s just what happened. A 50 million-year-old insect really was ‘frightened out of its skin’ another favorite idiom. Researchers discovered a exoskeleton entombed in amber as it tried to escape approaching tree sap. An exoskeleton is an external covering or integument, especially when hard, as the shells of crustaceans.

Researchers have discovered a 50-million-year-old deposit of Baltic amber containing the exoskeleton of an ancient insect, which appears to have rapidly shed its skin in order to escape the flowing sap. Now that was magic 50 million years ago.

The specimen also contains the first mushroom ever found in Baltic amber, along with the hair of a mammal thought to have bitten it from the base of a tree.

The irony of life that 50 million years later this one insect would be a part of history and part of our NewsJustIn demonstrating to us the wonders of life.

Researchers say this discovery provides a rare glimpse at the interactions of ancient life forms, acting like a ‘docudrama’ of life 50 million years ago. A ‘docudrama’ is a fictionalized drama based primarily on actual events.

Just last year I found a friendly spider in my house while I was vacuuming. I didn’t want to end its life with the suction of the vacuum cleaner and I certainly didn’t want to step on it accidently. So like a good samaritan I picked it up took it outside and crouched down to lay the friendly spider in my courtyard when suddenly Gozzy my lizard came at the speed of lightening and gobbled up the spider; I was trying to extend its life. Well, I have to admit that I really should have minded my own business instead of trying to act like a hero. But any how this spider made the news and history. The End

©NatalieKeshing Editor-in-Chief of NatsWritings.com or NatalieKeshing.com