Microscopic tardigrades have thrived on Earth for more than 500 million years, and may well outlive humans, but the tiny creatures don’t leave behind many fossils.
Hiding in plain sight, the third-ever tardigrade fossil on record has been found suspended within a piece of 16-million-year-old Dominican amber.
The find includes a newly named species, Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus, as a relative of the modern living family of tardigrades known as Isohypsibioidea. It’s the first tardigrade fossil from the Cenozoic, our current geological era that began 66 million years ago.
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