99 million-year-old creature found intact as it was when alive in amber in Myanmar

A piece of Burmese amber has become a paleontological treasure after it trapped a glowing dinosaur-era creature.

According to Science Alert, a perfect fossil found in Myanmar is evidence that dinosaur-era creatures once admired one of the most enchanting sights of humanity today: a night sky filled with fireflies.

Burmese amber reveals Cretaceous creatures enjoyed night skies filled with fireflies just like us - (AI illustration: Anh Thu).

A new study led by paleontologist Chenyang Cai of the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed a precious 99-million-year-old specimen found in Myanmar.

The country has long been famous for its Burmese amber, which sometimes accidentally traps prehistoric creatures.

But this is only the second creature of the firefly lineage to appear in amber.

Close-up of a creature trapped in a piece of Burmese amber - (Photo: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences).

This specimen is special because it preserves the entire firefly intact, including something invaluable to scientists: the "lantern" on its tail.

The newly discovered creature also belongs to a different species than the previous specimen. It has been given the species name Flammarionella hehaikuni .

The firefly found in Burmese amber was previously Protoluciola albertalleni, which also preserved evidence of luminescence and is from the same period as this specimen.

However, the scientists had an extra piece of luck: The first firefly was male, while the one they found was female. They have some different body structures, for example, males tend to have much more bizarre antennae than females.

Additionally, another research team once found a glowing insect that was not a firefly in another amber mine in Myanmar.

According to Dr. Cai and his colleagues, this new creature is living proof that the ability to glow in insects is older than we thought and that around 99 million years ago, this ability had evolved in many species of fireflies.

They hope to find more bioluminescent organisms in the Cretaceous and Mesozoic periods in general, to understand why and how bioluminescence emerged in the animal world.

The study was recently published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.