By Sid Perkins
As the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. So, what should you do if you suffer the misfortune of dropping a fragile, 20-million-year-old piece of amber that entombs a perfectly preserved fossil termite? If you’re evolutionist Lynn Margulis, you mutter a mild curse, pick up the clear, yellow pieces–each of which holds half of the termite–and squeeze some unscheduled science out of the mishap.
When the University of Massachusetts at Amherst scientist and her colleagues took a look at the pieces under a microscope, they were pleasantly surprised. The fracture had cleaved the termite’s abdomen, exposing fossils of the microbes that had helped the animal digest its woody meals. The finding stimulated Margulis and her colleagues to break more termite-bearing pieces of amber.