How Wasps Populated Rotting Dinosaur Eggs

[Nandomas]

How Wasps Populated Rotting Dinosaur Eggs

Exceptionally preserved fossils of insect cocoons have allowed researchers in Argentina to describe how wasps played an important role in food webs devoted to consuming rotting dinosaur eggs.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110715135200.htm

Scale bar = 5 cm in both cases. (Photo Credit: Jorge Genise)

[Plantguy]

How Wasps Populated Rotting Dinosaur Eggs

Exceptionally preserved fossils of insect cocoons have allowed researchers in Argentina to describe how wasps played an important role in food webs devoted to consuming rotting dinosaur eggs.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110715135200.htm

Scale bar = 5 cm in both cases. (Photo Credit: Jorge Genise)

Hey Nando, what a fascinating read. What another super example of those rare and strange fossil associations. Thanks for sharing. So many interesting things out there to ponder.

On a analogous sidenote…I know this article has already mentioned rotting eggs but I’ll insert a Self edit/disclaimer: For all those with mildly squeamish stomachs and/or if any of you are doughnut lovers stop reading this entry now!) While in college I had this part time doughnut delivery job and one of the specialties of the doughnut shop was their glazed crème-filled doughnuts of all colors and various flavors. You had your basic lemon filled, chocolate filled with white sprinkles, vanilla crème filled with powdered sugar, custard filled with chocolate icing and then there were the glazed raspberry filled beauties. Getting hungry yet, suppress and stop that feeling now!…

The ugly part= Various parts of insect behavior probably haven’t changed much in those 70 million years since those Argentinian wasps were messing around in the dinosaur eggs. They are still crawling/flying/investigating everywhere and reproducing and looking for food. “Yellow jackets” (a type of ground dwelling wasp) in California were and still are very much attracted to doughnut fillings and most notably the insanely sweet raspberry filled kinds. In fact, when I used to go make doughnut pickups the next day of day old, non-eaten returns you’d find the little wasps oh so much very well preserved and mired in the raspberry goo on the outside and sometimes inside of the doughnuts. So to put this in the paleontology/geology context as it should be here in the forum and not just another doughnut story---A week old raspberry doughnut was/is kind of like amber in the making or a Labrea tar seep with insects on a much smaller scale.

Don’t tell my mother I said this about doughnuts. Please!! Regards, Chris

[Shamalama]

What a fascinating aspect of an ancient ecosystem! Interesting that they went for rotting egg stuff (presumably albumen and dead fetus material). Especially when you consider that most wasps I see are going for the sugary stuff and nectar. I suppose some species are carnivorous.