100 million-year-old insect discovered perfectly preserved

(Peter Vršanský)

An extinct cockroach that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs has been found trapped in amber.

The fossilised insect, called Manipulator modificaputis, was found in a mine in Myanmar.

It was part of a family of cockroaches that actively hunted prey, according to Peter Vršanský from the Geological Institute in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Günter Bechly from the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, who examined the fossil.

Dozens of preserved insects were found in the area in Noije Bum, which Vršanský has declared the most important site of dinosaur-age amber in the world.

Studies of the fossils will help reconstruct the history of the animals and their ecosystem, New Scientist reports.