Third-Ever Tardigrade Fossil Discovered Hiding in a Hunk of Amber

Again with the accidental discoveries! It’s the third unexpected find within six weeks. This time, the good news was born from debris in a hunk of Dominican amber. The researchers were studying ants from the Miocene period, trapped in a piece of amber. A closer look at the “debris” inclusions, however, revealed an even greater prize than the ants. What researchers had thought was just a fleck of dust was in fact a fossil tardigrade, frozen in time for sixteen million years.

“It’s a faint speck in amber,” said Phil Barden, a senior author of the study. “In fact, Pdo. chronocaribbeus was originally an inclusion hidden in the corner of an amber piece with three different ant species that our lab had been studying, and it wasn’t spotted for months.”

Tardigrade fossils are hard to find, because they don’t make many fossils in the first place. Tardigrades don’t form skeletal fossils, because unlike other animals, their tissues don’t biomineralize. Broadly speaking, tardigrades use chitin as their structural protein, like insects; humans use collagen, and collagen calcifies into bone. Tardigrades don’t even make bones. That’s why it’s so exciting that scientists have discovered a fossil tardigrade: this is only the third one that’s ever been discovered.

The origin of the “ghost lineage” of tardigrades remains somewhat occluded, and it’s hard to make statements about its deep history. We have access to living tardigrades, but we only knew about two fossils total until late last week. “Scientists know where tardigrades broadly fit in the tree of life, that they are related to arthropods, and that they have a deep origin during the Cambrian Explosion. The problem is that we have this extremely lonely phylum with only three named fossils. Most of the fossils from this phylum are found in amber but, because they’re small, even if they are preserved it may be really difficult to see them,” said senior author Javier Ortega-Hernández. The new waterbear on the block is presented as the type specimen for a new genus and species: Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus.

At half a millimeter long, the new tardigrade was large enough for its macro-features to be visible using a light microscope. Beyond that level of detail, the fossil’s insides were too muddled for the scientists to make sense of them using regular microscopes. However, in a happy coincidence, chitin lights up under a confocal laser microscope. Using its much higher magnification, the researchers captured key features of the fossil tardigrade’s “bucco-pharyngeal apparatus and foregut.”

There are a couple distinct kinds of waterbears; one, the “eutardigrade,” is referred to as “naked” because its outer layer is smooth, like skin. The other kind, “heterotardigrades,” makes chitinous plates like a panzerbjorn’s armor. This one is a eutardigrade, with a smooth outer layer. The scientists also got close-ups of its snout, belly and claws. Once finished with its vanity shoot, the fossil made its way to its new home at the American Museum of Natural History.

“The discovery of a fossil tardigrade is truly a once-in-a-generation event,” said Barden. “What is so remarkable is that tardigrades are a ubiquitous ancient lineage that has seen it all on Earth, from the fall of the dinosaurs to the rise of terrestrial colonization of plants. Yet, they are like a ghost lineage for paleontologists with almost no fossil record. Finding any tardigrade fossil remains is an exciting moment where we can empirically see their progression through Earth history.”