Researchers discover 4,000 year-old termite mounds
Digital Reporter
Wednesday, November 21, 2018, 2:05 PM - Researchers have discovered a giant complex of 200 million termite mounds in northeastern Brazil -- and they've been sitting there, silently, for 4,000 years.
The mounds are enormous -- standing upwards of 4 metres high and nine meters wide at the base. It covers 88,000 square miles, which is about the size of Great Britain.
Scientists detected the mounds, which are hidden under layers of trees and vegetation, using satellite imagery.
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"These mounds were formed by a single termite species that excavated a massive network of tunnels to allow them access to dead leaves to eat safely and directly from the forest floor," says Stephen Martin of the University of Salford in the UK in a statement.
"The amount of soil excavated is over 10 cubic kilometers, equivalent to 4,000 great pyramids of Giza, and represents one of the biggest structures built by a single insect species."
The piles have no internal structure and are comprised of waste soil that's been ejected from a central tunnel.
Scientists were first alerted about the mounds, which are still being built, when nearby land was cleared for pasture.
Collected samples indicated the structures are between 690 and 3,280 years ago. That's about the same age as the world's oldest termite mounds in Africa.
A complete paper on the discovery has been published in Current Biology.
