Zhangpu's biota, including amber biota and related mega fossils, is the richest biota
Zhangpu amber biota contains a variety ofthe perfectly preserved fauna of fossil arthropods, as well as numerous botanical and other inclusions such as mushrooms, snails and even feathers. Botanical inclusions include bryophytes (liverworts and mosses) and flowering plants. The Zhangpu amber insect fauna includes a variety of ants, bees, lacewings, stick insects, termites and grasshoppers, which today only inhabit the tropics of Southeast Asia and New Guinea.
Arthropod inclusions in discovered ambercover an impressive array of more than 250 families, including various spiders, mites, millipedes, and at least 200 insect families in 20 orders. The extremely high diversity of arthropods makes the Zhangpu amber biota one of the four richest in the world, along with the well-known Cretaceous Burmese amber biota (> 568 families), the Eocene Baltic amber biota (> 550 families) and the Miocene Dominican amber biota (205 families) .
“The most unexpected discovery was thata wide variety of ants and springtails belong to living (currently extant) genera. In addition, the vast majority of previously identified insects in Zhangpu amber, such as bark lice, grasshoppers, beetles and bees, also belong to living genera."
Professor Wang Bo from Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS)
These results suggest that communitiesinsects from the tropical forests of Asia have remained stable since the Middle Miocene (15 million years ago). In general, rainforests act as biodiversity museums on a general level. The relative ecological stability of such mega-thermal environments contributes to the continuous accumulation of species diversity and makes them even more valuable.
Zhangpu's amber biota is unique because accountingspecies are minimally distorted by human selective bias. Moreover, its exact age is strictly limited by radioisotope dating, and the associated compression / imprint fossils of plants allow quantitative reconstruction of the ancient climate.
Compared to the current climate of Zhangpu, the most notable difference is the warmer winters in the Middle Miocene climate, which resulted in relatively stable temperatures throughout the year.
In global warming scenarios, winter warming is usually more pronounced than summer warming and has more severe and widespread impacts on terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
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