The ancestor of ants is "Mars ants". "Mars ant" is the last common ancestor of all ants discovered so far, and it is also the direct descendant of a subterraneanforager. Their ancestors lived underground until 654.38+0.2 billion years ago.

2008-09- 16 news, according to the British "Times" report, American biologists discovered a new ant in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, and initially determined that it may be the descendant of the oldest ant. Because this kind of ant has many unprecedented characteristics, biologists call it "the ant from Mars".

research status

After morphological and genetic analysis, Rabah and others classified this ant into a subfamily. This is the first time that scientists have discovered living ants belonging to a new subfamily since 1923. All other ants belonging to this new subfamily were found in the form of fossils. There are 2 1 ant subfamily known.

The DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) analysis of this ant's leg shows that this ant belongs to the first subspecies separated from the main lineage shortly after it evolved from wasp to ant more than 65.438+0.2 billion years ago.