I have a small piece of Burmese amber with a worker of the stem ant Gerontoformica sp. When focusing the head using incident light, it can be seen a white bilateral structure with several lateral lobes (the third image attached). Could this structure belong to the brain?
The structure surely looks interesting! It's shape looks not unsimilar to an ant brain, but the position is certainly off (which could happen in a fossil of course if it is deformed in some way). A µCT Scan would most likely allow further clarification!
I agree, the shape appears to be similar to what I would expect from a deformed insect brain. It certainly looks slightly distorted and the position is different than I would expect, but as Adrian said, that is possible. With the images it is difficult to track, but a CT scan would indeed be interesting. If I am not overinterpreting (biased in trying to see a brain in it), it seems to stretch into the antennae and the mouthparts. Actually, I can't see optic lobes (but might also be they are deeper within the headcapsule), but if it is indeed part of the brain, I think the antennal lobes and the nerves for the mouthparts are visible.
I agree with colleaguesAdrian Richter Thies H. Büscher
µCT imaging is best. It is good if you find a competent specialist who will help you correctly configure the CTV protocols. I worked for SkySkan, he was good at analyzing samples in amber.
Regards, Pushkin Sergey Viktorovich
Thank you Adrian, Thies, and Pushkin. As you all say, the CT scan would clarify the structure and its connections. As Thies commented, I also speculated that the median lobes (located near the antennal insertions) and the lower lobes (directed downward), should correspond, respectively, to the antennal lobes and to the mouthparts nerves. But the hypothetical optic lobes (and the ocellar nerves) can't be seen in the images!
I attach an image of the Gerontoformica worker in lateral view so that it can be appreciated the large distance between the eyes and the structure. The possibility that part of the brain had been fossilized is really surprising, but if it were true it could shed some light on the Natural History of these Cretaceous ants and on the evolution of the ant brain.
Tentorium??
Article Morphology of the tentorium in the ant genus Lasius Fabriciu...
The eyes aren't large, which means the optic lobes are probably reduced and/or tightly connected with the central body of the brain. At least we can see that trend in micro-CT scans of contemporary ants.
I find this specimen fascinating, muscle fibres in the mesosoma and legs seem to be preserved and visible as well.
Dear colleagues, José María Gómez Durán was so kind to send us the specimen for micro-CT scanning and together with Julian Katzke we did a long high-res CT scan of the head. We were able to actually figure out what the white mass is. So, almost everyone above was a little bit correct but the reality of a 90ish Mio years old ant is a bit different. The white mass you can see is actually composed of shrunken mouthparts anteriorly, the "food pellet" (all ants have this rounded structure that consists of solid, high density food particles inside the buccal cavity) in the middle, and parts of the brain posteriorly. So, basically it consists of several tissues that got strongly compressed and deformed over time. Sadly, it's not possible to distinguish any parts of the mouthparts or brain in detail for comparative examinations.
Thank you very much, Francisco and Julian. Great work and detailed conclusions. The mystery solved!
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