Two specimens of spoonbill that have been given the names Crenocticola svadba and Mulleriblattina bowangi and have been placed in the Nocticolidae family lived during the time of the dinosaurs .
The interesting thing is that these two specimens were exquisitely preserved in amber to this day: they lived 99 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. The find has taken place in a cave in Myanmar by an international team of researchers .
Hukawng Valley
These precious specimens were discovered among amber deposits that had been removed from a mine in Myanmar’s Hukawng Valley, and it has not been easy: the researchers were given 110 tons of amber to study .
The researchers report that the cockroach specimens represent the only known survivors of the cave from the age of the dinosaurs. All in all, they have many characteristics common to modern cave-dwelling roaches .
The researchers suggest that the cockroaches may have fed on dinosaur guano in the same way that many modern roaches feed on droppings left behind by birds and bats.
Now we need to know if these cockroaches have modern relatives, meaning more work is required to determine whether the two new species they found survived the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs .