A fossilised 113-million-year-old hell ant from Brazil adds to the evidence that the first ants evolved in the southern hemisphere before moving north – and beyond
By James Dinneen
24 April 2025
A 110-million-year-old fossil of the hell ant Vulcanidris cratensis
Anderson Lepeco
At more than 110 million years old, a fossil excavated in Brazil is the oldest undisputed ant fossil ever discovered. The finding adds to evidence that the first ants evolved on the supercontinent of Gondwana in the southern hemisphere before spreading across the rest of the world.
“We have evidence they were in South America, they were in Gondwana, during their early evolution,” says Anderson Lepeco at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
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Lepeco came across the fossil in a large collection delivered to the university’s zoological museum. The specimens all came from the Crato Formation in north-east Brazil, which formed during the Lower Cretaceous Period.
He immediately suspected this fossil was from an extinct group of insects called hell ants. “That head shape was similar to one species we found in Burmese amber,” he says. “This gave me the hint.”
Hell ants are particularly interesting because they represent a transitional “stem lineage”, says Lepeco – they are more closely related to the wasp-like common ancestor of all ants than to the species alive today, although they did have ant-like social structures.