<\/p>\n This photo provided by researchers in September 2025 shows a Diptera Brachycera fly of the family Dolichopodidae (long-legged flies) trapped in a Cretaceous-era amber sample discovered in Ecuador. (M\u00f3nica Sol\u00f3rzano-Kraemer via AP)<\/p>\n This photo provided by researchers in September 2025 shows a Diptera Brachycera fly of the family Dolichopodidae (long-legged flies) trapped in a Cretaceous-era amber sample discovered in Ecuador. (M\u00f3nica Sol\u00f3rzano-Kraemer via AP)<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n Almost all known amber deposits from the past 130 million years<\/a> have been in the Northern Hemisphere, and it\u2019s long been \u201can enigma\u201d that scientists have found few in southern regions that once comprised the supercontinent Gondwana, said David Grimaldi, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History who was not involved in the discovery.<\/p>\n This marks the first time researchers have identified ancient beetles, flies, ants and wasps in fossilized tree resin in South America, said Ricardo P\u00e9rez-de la Fuente, a paleoentomologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, who also was not involved in the new study.<\/p>\n \u201cAmber pieces are little windows into the past,\u201d P\u00e9rez-de la Fuente said, adding that the discovery will help researchers understand the evolving interactions between flowering plants and insects that lived during the era of the dinosaurs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This photo provided by researchers in September 2025 shows a Cretaceous-era fossil of a fern leaf found in a quarry in Ecuador. (Fabiany Herrera via AP)<\/p>\n This photo provided by researchers in September 2025 shows a Cretaceous-era fossil of a fern leaf found in a quarry in Ecuador. (Fabiany Herrera via AP)<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n The researchers uncovered hundreds of fragments of amber, some containing ancient insects, pollen and tree leaves, at a sandstone quarry in Ecuador<\/a> that\u2019s on the edge of what is today the Amazon basin.<\/p>\n But today\u2019s rainforest is much different from what dinosaurs roamed through, Herrera said. Based on an analysis of fossils in the amber, the ancient rainforest contained species of ferns and conifers, including the unusual Monkey Puzzle Tree, that no longer grow in Amazonia.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a different kind of forest,\u201d said Herrera.<\/p>\n The amber deposits were previously known to geologists and miners who worked at the Genoveva quarry. Study co-author Carlos Jaramillo at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute first heard of them about a decade ago and set out to find the exact location, aided by geology field notes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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