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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →A newly described planthopper fossil from Myanmar amber has been named Cretodorus noonoo, after the Teletubbies’ hose-equipped vacuum cleaner. Its unusual mouthpart was reported to reach nearly twice the insect’s body length; researchers think it may have helped the insect reach sap inside cracks in tree bark.
What is Cretodorus noonoo?
Cretodorus noonoo is a newly named planthopper species known from fossils preserved in Kachin amber from Myanmar. A Tel Aviv University report puts the fossils at approximately 99 million years old, placing the insect in the Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs lived.
The research team examined 13 fossils from the planthopper family Neazoniidae. The study is identified as Dolev Fabrikant and colleagues’ 2026 paper, “Flexible Drinking Straws of the Cretaceous: A Novel Type of Labium in Mesozoic Auchenorrhyncha and Its Functional Implications,” published in Insects (DOI: 10.3390/insects17080789). The team included researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Why is the insect named after Noo-Noo?
The species name, or epithet, “noonoo” refers to Noo-Noo, the friendly vacuum cleaner in the children’s television series Teletubbies. The resemblance is in the hose: the fossil insect had a long, flexible-looking mouthpart that recalled the character’s extended tube.
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Co-author and Tel Aviv University researcher Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou described the discovery as “an extraordinary glimpse into the insect world of the age of the dinosaurs.”
What was unusual about its mouthpart?
The insect’s elongated mouthpart was reported to reach nearly twice the length of its body. Researchers used high-resolution micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) to reconstruct its internal structure. The scans revealed dense transverse folds along the mouthpart.
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The researchers interpret those folds as structural features that could let the mouthpart bend while helping it resist kinking or collapse. Some specimens also preserve bent mouthparts, which they view as further evidence of flexibility. These are interpretations of fossil anatomy; the fossils cannot show how the mouthpart moved in a living insect.
What did the insect eat?
The researchers propose that Cretodorus noonoo used its mouthpart to probe cracks and crevices in tree bark and reach sap in deeper tissues. That is an inference from its anatomy, not a directly observed diet. The report distinguishes this proposed piercing-and-sucking use from nectar feeding: the mouthparts pointed backward, and the researchers found no convincing pollen accumulation on the fossils they examined.
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Was this kind of mouthpart common in the Cretaceous?
The Tel Aviv University report says comparable long or corrugated structures appeared in several unrelated groups of Cretaceous insects, while this structure is unknown among the planthopper’s living relatives. The researchers raise the possibility that thick-barked trees created feeding opportunities for insects with such mouthparts. A further proposed connection to fire-prone, resin-producing forests remains a hypothesis, not an established cause of the structure’s evolution.
Read the Tel Aviv University-credited report at Phys.org.
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