A praying mantis preserved in amber for millions of years not a sculpture, but a real prehistoric insect trapped in tree resin and fossilized into a natural time capsule.
An entire moment from ancient Earth… frozen before humans even existed.
Check out : https://www.natureknows.org/2024/02/30-million-year-old-praying-mantis-is.html
Real question: if the amber prevents the mantis from decaying, and its cells are still intact, is it actually dead? Do we know that for sure?
Real answer: yes, it’s as dead as anyone can be. 2 seconds after your death, your body isn’t decaying yet, but that doesn’t make you alive. Bodies kept in the freezers didn’t decay but still, are not alive at all.
If the mantis didn’t suffocate somehow, it would die of hunger or old age.
I guess the question is, what distinguishes a “dead” cell from a “live” one if it is not in decay? What makes this Mantis impossible to revive?
Most of the proteins within the cell would denature over (a fairly short) time, which means all the cell functions would fail. The cell membranes would also rupture and dissolve or rot eventually. Only the hard keratin exoskeleton would remain reasonably intact.
All that makes reviving any dead animal impossible plus much more.
The amber only protects the outer layer, I would assume that everything inside is already a dried pulp (but I am guessing).
Same reason CPR works right after someone drowns but not after they’ve been underwater a week…
You see, every cell has a “powerhouse” that turns stuff, including oxygen, into energy.
They keep a store of oxygen and food in every cell, respiration removes the waste and delivers resources.
Cut off respiration, and things start to shut down. Higher order systems first, and individual cells last.
That’s why sometimes CPR works, but it took so long that the brain was deprived of oxygen and suffers damage. Everything was deprived of oxygen, but the most complicated shit needs the most and runs out first.
An insect can be “brought back” after a much longer time than a human without problems, but there’s still a clock before each cell runs out of “on hand” resources and die. Whether or not decay happens after is completely separate.
For the absolutely most basic things like virus or bacteria, or even water bears, they’ve adapted to be able to spring back after a long time, sometimes thousands or tens of thousands of years…
But a mantis is just too complicated. Especially after 30 million years.
Yeah…
Insects breathe thru oxygen exchange thru skin.
You cover up all their skin in amber, they suffocate just like when a kid doesn’t poke holes in a jar lid.
Because there’s no oxygen, the bacteria also dies and no decay happens.
It’s the same as a peat bog corpse. There’s no life, it’s just with the complete absence of life there’s no decay. And the amber seals in moisture so there’s no dessication either.
Now on the flips side:
It’s not immediate. An old “jail house magic trick” is catch a live fly, put it in a bottle of water, and wait till the mark agrees it’s dead. The bet/grift is you can bring it back to life.
And you can, by rolling it in salt for a few seconds, it will get up and fly away.
You have seconds to bring it back, less than a minute
Much, much shorter than 30,000,000 years, that mantis ain’t coming back.
That shouldn’t be up to the kid, it should be up to whoever captured the kid and put them in a jar.
This is the problem with society today…
Back in my day, we had to poke our own airholes!
Ok, but did we try rolling the mantis in salt?
The premise is wrong, though. Resin tends to be acidic. You know what doesn’t like acid treatment? Chitin, on account of being a polysaccharide.
And even - or especially - if the resin was perfectly neutral, it would slowly suck the fats stored in the insect’s tissues out of the same.
Plus the O2 that’s slowly diffusing in - and out - of the resin will, especially in connection with sunlight, decompose more and more stuff.
Whatever the decomposition processes are, you can see an orange-tinted sort of halo around the mantis. That’s the mixing zone - mantis molecules, meet resin molecules.