Antarctic flies
A newly classified fossil provides evidence that higher flies also lived in Antarctica.
May 7, 2003
It has been assumed that the Antarctic has never been colonized by the higher fly species — the Diptera or "true" flies. In a Brief Communication in the May 8
Ashworth and Thompson extracted the fossil from a Neogene siltstone outcrop at the Beardmore Glacier, approximately 500 km from the South Pole. Using scanning electron microscopy, they estimated the fossil length to be 5 to 7.5 mm and discovered that it bore structures consistent with it being a cyclorapphan dipteran. These structures include a single pair of round spiracles, an integument with circular patterning (reflecting the chitin secretion pattern), spines on the ventral welt,...
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