Oscar Piastri has 100-million-year old insect named after him in ‘iconic’ tribute
Researchers have named a 100-million-year-old wasp fossil Gwesped piastrii after McLaren F1 driver Oscar Piastri, discovered in Myanmar and preserved in amber.
The 1.15mm long fossil is from the middle Cretaceous period, which ended about 66 million years ago, making it older than the T-Rex dinosaur by about 30 million years.
Piastri was honored for his Formula 1 achievements, and the wasp was named after him due to the iconic McLaren orange color of the amber piece by the researchers.
The three researchers involved were Corentin Jouault from the University of Oxford, Di-Ying Huang from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China, and Celso O. Azevedo from the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo in Brazil.
For more information and an image of Gwesped piastrii, you can view their research by clicking this link!
