Beautifully preserved specimens of butterflies from the Caribbean, caught maybe in the act of egg-laying some 20 million years ago, provide welcome grist to the mill of debate about butterfly history. Writing in Proceedings of the Royal Society, Halland colleagues describe a new fossil butterfly from examples preserved in amber from Dominica, on the island of Hispaniola. They have called the butterfly Voltinia dramba: about 20 million years old, it is the first adult butterfly to be formally described from Dominican or any other type of amber. Its discovery raises key issues about Caribbean biogeography, behavioural evolution (or lack of it), and the origin of butterflies.
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