The ‘monster’ fly trapped in amber found in northern Myanmar. Pic: Supplied

RESEARCHERS last month announced the discovery of a bizarre new species of fly that lived in the jungles of Myanmar about 100 million years ago.

With a distinctive horn topped by three eyes, the species, which is also part of a new genus and family, has been variously dubbed a “monster” and a “unicorn” fly.

“This ‘unicorn’ fly was one of the oddities of the Cretaceous world and was obviously an evolutionary dead end,” said Dr George Poinar, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, who announced the new species in Cretaceous Research, a professional journal. “No other insect ever discovered has a horn like that, and there’s no animal at all with a horn that has eyes on top.”

“It was probably a docile little creature that fed on the pollen and nectar of tiny tropical flowers,” Dr Poinar said in an Oregon State University press release. “But it was really bizarre looking. One of the reviewers of the study called it a monster, and I have to admit it had a face only another fly could have loved. I was thinking of making some masks based on it for Halloween.”

The fossil was found trapped in amber excavated from a mine in Kachin State’s Hukawng Valley in 2001 and is thought to be somewhere from 97 to 110 million years old.

The specimen was well-preserved, lacking only the rear left portion of the abdomen and a portion of the left hind leg. Scientists noted in the report that it is rare to find specimens with essentially a complete body as well as wings.

The fly also had other very unusual characteristics, the study found, such as an odd-shaped antenna, unusually long legs that would have helped it crawl over flowers and extremely small vestigial mandibles that would have limited it to nibbling on very tiny particles of food.

Dr Poinar has named the new species Cascoplecia insolitis – from the Latin “cascus” for old and “insolates” for strange and unusual.