{"id":931084,"date":"2026-10-13T05:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T05:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/931084\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T05:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T05:06:12","slug":"this-99-million-year-old-insect-had-a-mouth-like-a-drinking-straw-nearly-twice-as-long-as-its-body-its-purpose-was-even-stranger-than-it-looked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/931084\/","title":{"rendered":"This 99-million-year-old insect had a mouth like a drinking straw, nearly twice as long as its body. Its purpose was even stranger than it looked\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Approximately 99 million years ago, when dinosaurs<\/a> were still roaming the Earth, a tiny creature became trapped in tree resin, which then hardened and turned into amber. Now, the fossil<\/a> preserved within has allowed scientists to identify and describe a new species of prehistoric insect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The research was conducted by scientists from the School of Zoology and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University, Israel, in collaboration with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.\u00a0The findings were\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in the journal\u00a0Insects.<\/p>\n

The researchers examined insect fossils belonging to the ancient family of planthoppers called Neazoniidae \u2013 including 13 specimens preserved in amber from Myanmar.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The newly-described species \u2013\u00a0Cretodorus noonoo, or \u2018Noo-Noo\u2019 \u2013 as well as its close relatives, had exceptionally long and flexible mouthparts, reaching nearly twice the length of the insect\u2019s body. This extraordinary biological adaptation is unknown among any of its living relatives today, who tend to have mouthparts structured like a simple needle \u2013\u00a0allowing them to pierce plant tissues and suck fluids from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the ancient insects, the mouthparts\u2019 surface was densely covered with folds at an angle of 90\u00b0. By reconstructing their internal structure with the assistance of high-resolution micro-computed tomography, the researchers found that these folds weren\u2019t just there as ornamentation but were part of the structure itself. They likely gave the mouthparts flexibility and prevented them from kinking or collapsing \u2013\u00a0much like a bendy drinking straw.<\/p>\n

In several specimens, the mouthparts were preserved in a bent position, further confirming that hypothesis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Illustration of\u00a0Cretoduros noonoo. Credit: Dolev Fabrikant
\nSap specialists<\/p>\n

Why would a small insect need such long mouthparts? When it comes to extant species<\/a>, a butterfly<\/a> comes to mind, with its long, flexible proboscis used to drink nectar. But the researchers don\u2019t think this applies to the Noo-Noo: its mouthparts pointed backward and functioned as a piercing-and-sucking system, not really suitable for drinking nectar. To further support this, no evidence of pollen was found on the ancient insects\u2019 bodies.<\/p>\n

The explanation proposed by the researchers is that the Noo-Noo was a specialist in sucking sap from trees. More rigid mouthparts couldn\u2019t reach deep inside the crevices in tree bark \u2013 but long and flexible ones could have snaked through narrow cracks and guided the piercing organs at the tip. These organs had two grooved lobes that likely opened during feeding, anchoring the long mouthparts to the walls of the crack.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"An amber fossil of a Neazoniid planthopper. Credit: Dolev Fabrikant
\nWider implications\u00a0<\/p>\n

This discovery could also be significant in our understanding of Cretaceous forests. Long or corrugated feeding structures appear in several unrelated insect groups from this period \u2013\u00a0suggesting the forests of the time were rich in thick-barked trees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As noted in the study, resin-producing forests of the Cretaceous were also associated with evidence of recurrent fires, and trees in fire-prone environments often develop thicker bark. The researchers cautiously suggest such conditions might have influenced the development of such feeding structures in several insect species.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe discovery of a new species that lived approximately 99 million years ago, gives us an extraordinary glimpse into the insect world of the age of the dinosaurs,\u201d said Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou of the School of Zoology, Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and New Environmental School at Tel Aviv University.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is therefore not simply the addition of another name to the tree of life, but another piece of the puzzle that enables us to reconstruct what ecosystems looked like and how they functioned tens of millions of years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full findings\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Top image: the newly described species, Cretoduros\u00a0noonoo. Credit: Dolev Fabrikant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Approximately 99 million years ago, when dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth, a tiny creature became trapped in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":931085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-931084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/931085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}