Inside a Bug’s Stomach

Insects trapped in amber have long provided a window on the prehistoric world. Now scientists in France are using a particle accelerator called a Synchrotron to scan opaque amber and create 3-D models of these insects in exquisite detail. Ari Daniel Shapiro reports. (Photo: Paul Tafforeau for ESRF paleontological microtomographic database) Download MP3

• European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
• Photos: See images from the ESRF
• Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the AMNH

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MARCO WERMAN: The dormouse might be faced with extinction, but in the movie Jurassic Park, you may recall that scientists brought an extinct creature back from the dead. Dinosaurs were re-created by extracting blood from a mosquito trapped in amber. That was, of course, fiction, but scientists have learned a lot about prehistoric life by studying insects in amber. And they’re learning even more, thanks to a new technique devised by researchers in France. Reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro has the story.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO:  In jewelry, amber’s beautiful. It’s made up of transparent polished golden orbs. But paleontologists who dig this stuff up will tell you most amber doesn’t look like that.

DAVID GRIMALDI:  This is pretty much what it looks like when it comes out of the ground.

SHAPIRO: That’s David Grimaldi. He’s a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Grimaldi opens a plastic bag containing a couple dozen chunks of amber. The amber is cloudy.

GRIMALDI: Most of the amber when it’s excavated is not beautifully clear and you can’t see through it very well. And it’s very frustrating to work with this stuff.

SHAPIRO: Frustrating because amber can contain hidden treasures. You see amber is fossilized resin that oozed from trees millions of years ago. And sometimes that resin captured insects before it hardened. But if you can’t gaze though the amber, then it’s hard to know where an insect might be. Grimaldi says one way of getting ‘round this difficulty is to actually slice into a piece of amber using a diamond saw. Naturally, this approach isn’t without risk.

GRIMALDI: So, when you’re doing this trimming, you could be cutting into an insect.

SHAPIRO: And you could end up destroying a rare sample. Now, paleontologists can look inside amber without damaging insects by using CT scans, but those images aren’t very detailed. Which is way scientists are excited about a new technique developed in Grenoble, France.

CARMEN [PH] SORIANO: I’m always saying that we are able to see the [INDISCERNIBLE] with a new kind of glasses, but we never used before.

SHAPIRO:  Carmen [PH] Soriano is part of the team that’s using those new glasses. She’s a paleontologist and she works at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. That’s a particle accelerator mostly used to study atoms and molecules. The Synchrotron is a half mile enclosed track. It’s packed with magnets to propel electrons at close to the speed of light. One by-product is high-powered x-rays. X-rays that can be used to study fossils, including amber, noninvasively and in exquisite detail. Paul Tafforeau is a paleontologist here as well. He opens his password-protected cabinet and pulls out a piece of amber. It’s opaque, but Tafforeau says it conceals a trove of prehistoric insects.

PAUL TAFFOREAU: She has more than 500 insects [INDISCERNIBLE], in that. [INDISCERNIBLE] without the Synchrotron.

SHAPIRO: But with the Synchrotron, that swarm of insects becomes very visible. Tafforeau uses the x-rays to create 3-D computer renderings of the insects all the way down to their wing veins and leg hairs. He can then create physical models of the insects. Tafforeau’s got an assortment of these models. He calls them 3-D prints. They’re gold and silver painted bugs. Tafforeau holds up a gilded beetle the size of a shoe.

TAFFOREAU: He’s not natural size. It is a giant beetle. The print is giant, but the original one is just 4 millimeters. So it gives you an idea of the resolution of details we can see.

SHAPIRO: And Carmen Soriano is peering even deeper into these insects. Past the hard outer body shell and into their stomachs. She’s using the Synchrotron Radiation to see what the bugs ate.

SORIANO: We find pollen, we found spores, we found different parts of the plants inside these insects. That means that we know what was the diet of some insects. This is great.

SHAPIRO: Soriano is piecing together an ancient ecology. How insects and plants evolved together during a crucial moment in Earth’s history, when flowering plants first emerged on our planet. This work is attracting collaborators from all over the world, including David Grimaldi from the American Museum of Natural History.

GRIMALDI: It’s brought the observation of insects and amber to a whole new level. You can see features that you hadn’t know existed.

SHAPIRO:  Grimaldi’s already worked with the team in France to study moths and ants in amber. And next up, termites. For The World, I’m Ari Daniel Shapiro.

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