Canada’s first ‘Giant’ ant fossil found in Princeton, B.C.

The giant fossil queen ant Titanomyrma was discovered in the Allenby Formation by resident Beverley Burlingame near Princeton, British Columbia, the first of its kind in Canada.

A Princeton resident discovered the fossil of a giant, ancient ant in the nearby Allenby Formation, a rock formation that contains many plant and animal fossils.

Researchers say it’s the first known Canadian specimen from the genus “Titanomyrma,” meaning “Titanic Ant.”

Scientists estimate the gargantuan insects lived around 50 million years ago and may have been about half a foot long.

Dr. Bruce Archibald is a Paleoentomologist at Simon Fraser University and first discovered a similar specimen back in 2010 in Wyoming but says he was thrilled when another fossil of the massive insect turned up in B.C.

“The tremendously big ants are mainly known from Germany and Wyoming. And so I found one of these ants in a museum drawer in the Denver Museum in about 2010 and wrote it up in 2011. And it made quite a splash, and we figured out we were working mainly on the biogeography of this.”

Following that study Dr. Archibald and his colleagues looked at answering the next crucial question.

“How did it cross the continents and become suddenly in both places at the same time?”

Building on earlier research from 2011, the scientists found the largest ants lived in places with hot temperatures.