Illustration of the insect as it is believed to have appeared in its natural environment (in the center) created by artist Julia Kacerova; images of the amber in which it was discovered (around). (Photo provided by paleontologist Dany Azar)
In the Jurassic Park film series and the original novel, it is blood drawn from prehistoric insects trapped in amber that allowed the dinosaur species to be brought back to life. The fiction is far from reality, not only because blood that old cannot contain usable DNA, but also because no insect dating back to the Jurassic period had yet been discovered in amber, let alone a blood-sucking insect.
With the recent discovery by paleontologist Dany Azar and his colleagues, reality became a bit closer to fiction: The first insect from the Jurassic period found in amber in the world was discovered in a deposit in the Aitourin region, near Ehden, in the hills of northern Lebanon.
"This is the first insect ever discovered in amber dating from the Jurassic in the world, and to our delight, it is Lebanese," said Azar in response to questions from L'Orient-Le Jour.
The unprecedented discovery was the subject of an article published by the Lebanese scientist and his colleagues on March 13, 2025. Azar is a professor at the Lebanese University (LU) and an emeritus professor at the "Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology" and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The scientific paper on this insect was led by Oxford and published in China.
"The insect found is a male scale insect, a hemipteran (order of insect) that is a plant parasite and feeds on them," the expert said. With this insect, the team was able to identify a new family previously unknown to the scientific community. It has been named Jankotejacoccidae, in tribute to the late Polish expert on scale insects, Jan Koteja. The insect itself is of a new genus and species, now known as Jankotejacoccus libanogloria, in reference to "the glory" of Lebanon.
The amber where the insect was found dates from what is known as the terminal Jurassic era, more specifically the Kimmeridgian, about 155 million years ago. Previously, apart from a fly and a mite dating from the Triassic (approximately 200 to 250 million years ago), discovered in Italy, all insects found in amber around the world date from the Cretaceous (approximately 66 to 145 million years ago).
Genuine 'gold mines of information'
The amber in which this specimen was found formed on a tropical volcanic terrain northeast of the paleocontinent Gondwana (supercontinent formed 600 million years ago and began to fracture during the Jurassic, around 160 million years ago). According to Azar, "It was secreted by an extinct family of conifers, the Cheirolepidiaceae."
The expert noted the globally recognized characteristics of Lebanese amber.
"Lebanon is known for its 500 Lower Cretaceous amber deposits (125 million years ago), of which 32 contain fossils, and for its 19 terminal Jurassic amber deposits (155 million years ago)," he explained.
He added that "Lebanese amber, which has no commercial value, is a gold mine for information on the terminal Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous paleoenvironments, an era known for the emergence of flowering plants or angiosperms, which make up three-quarters of the current vegetation in our contemporary ecosystems."
The appearance of flowering plants is a major event in the evolution of life on Earth, as it experienced a clear parallel evolution between pollinating insects and plants.
This is not the first time a world-important discovery has been made on Lebanese soil. In December 2023, Azar and his team announced the discovery of the oldest mosquito in the world in Lebanese amber from Metn, an exceptional scientific discovery that was reported in the media worldwide.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.