Perfectly-preserved 'bog beetles' nearly as old as Egypt's pyramids

[Judi Lynn]

By Laura Geggel - Editor 17 hours ago

A bog preserved these beetles' bodies.

Two thumb-size beetles found preserved in an English bog may look as though they died as recently as yesterday, but in reality they're nearly as ancient as Egypt's pyramids, new research finds.

The two oak capricorn beetles (that belonged to the genus Cerambyx) date back 3,785 years, according to radiocarbon dating. That means these beetles perished inside a piece of bogwood just as the last woolly mammoths were dying out on Siberia's Wrangel Island, half a world over.

"These beetles are older than the Tudors, older than the Roman occupation of Britain, even older than the Roman Empire," Max Barclay, curator of beetles at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, said in a statement. "These beetles were alive and chewing the inside of that piece of wood when the pharaohs were building the pyramids in Egypt. It is tremendously exciting."

The bog beetles have been part of the NHM collection since the late 1970s, after a farmer discovered the lifeless beetles in a piece of wood on his farm in East Anglia, on the eastern coast of England known for its Bronze and Iron Age settlements, as well as its bogs. These waterlogged bogs have low-oxygen, highly-acidic conditions known for preserving organic matter, including dead bodies, Live Science previously reported.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/ancient-bog-beetles-england.html