A crab’s inland odyssey, captured in amber

A 100-million-year-old fossil captured in amber. (Photo: Xiao Jia) - Researchers have discovered the oldest known modern crab - trapped in amber since the time of the dinosaurs. The 100-million-year-old fossil of the crab, Cretapsara athanata , comes from Myanmar, in Southeast Asia. It fills a major gap in the fossil record for crabs and resets the timetable for when marine crabs made their way inland. Yale and Harvard paleontologists led the research, which appears Advances. " This discovery, in a pristine and spectacular 3D preservation - including fine details of the eyes, antennae, mouthparts, and even the gills - represents the oldest evidence of incursions into land and freshwater by crabs," said co-lead author Javier Luque, a former Yale researcher who is now a research associate at Harvard. "Crabs are primarily a marine group that only conquered land and freshwater much later, about 75 to 50 million years ago.