A mushroom 50 million years old has been found trapped in amber. The Eocene fungus was captured in time alongside the exoskeleton of a small insect, and a hair of a rodent.Scientists say the little tableaux gives a fascinating insight into life shortly after the dinosaurs became extinct.The insect, which is thought to have been feeding on the mushroom, jumped out of its skin - literally - when it found itself being enveloped by sticky tree sap and fled the scene, leaving its outer shell behind.A rodent hair, also trapped in the amber, suggests that a mouse or rat was nibbling at the mushroom before it was trapped in the amber, found near the Baltic Sea."From what we can see in this fossil, a tiny mushroom was bitten off, probably by a rodent, at the base of a tree," said George Poinar, a researcher at Oregon State University."A stick insect was probably also trying to feed on the mushroom. It appears to have jumped out of its skin a split second before being engulfed by the sap, which flowed over the exoskeleton it left behind and a hair from the fleeing rodent."Thousands of insects, plants and other life forms have been found trapped in ancient amber but the new discovery is the first to demonstrate that creatures sometimes avoided being entombed for the edification of distant posterity.Because they provide a snapshot of life, amber deposits give clues about ancient ecosystems. But on rare occasions such as this, they also show the interactions between life forms. ..