Scientists Find ‘Beyond Imagination’ Creature Trapped in 99-Million-Year-Old Amber

Sixteen tiny female wasps sealed inside amber have revealed an anatomical structure unlike anything known in living or extinct insects. The fossils came from northern Myanmar and date to the mid-Cretaceous, when dinosaurs still dominated terrestrial ecosystems.

Named Sirenobethylus charybdis, the insect carried a movable, Venus flytrap-like apparatus at the end of its abdomen. Scientists suspect it restrained another insect while depositing an egg, but no trapped host was preserved, leaving its exact behaviour open to interpretation.