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National Geographic : 1977 Sep
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IMMUNE TO TIME in its amber casket, a primitive wasplike ant (upper left) goes back some 100 million years, making it the oldest ant known to man. Dinosaurs still lumbered across the earth when this half-inch long example of the species Sphe comyrma freyi became imprisoned in resin. The hardened substance was buried until 1966, when two rock col lectors uncovered the treasure in a New Jersey clay formation. Scientists hail the insect, now in Har vard University's Department of Fossil Insects, as an important link in the evolution of ants. Though the specimen exhibits certain wasplike character istics, the structure of the thorax and 430
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