Dlium

NEWS - Slim antenna parasitoid wasp ( Palaeorhoptrocentrus tenuicornis sp. nov. Doryctinae), dark color parasitoid wasp ( Taphaeus obscurus Belokobylskij & Zaldívar-Riverón sp. nov. Brachistinae: Diospilini) and electron parasitoid wasp ( Eubazus electrus Belokobylskij & Zaldívar-Riverón sp. nov. Brachistinae: Brachistini) are reported as new species. Palaeorhoptrocentrus tenuicornis described based on a single female and named after “tenuis” (Latin for slender) and “cornis” (Latin for horn or projection) referring to its very slender antennae. Specimen from Primorskiy quarry, Yantarny, Kaliningrad Province, Russia. Baltic amber from the Late Eocene, Priabonian range. This species is similar to the type species of the genus, Palaeorhoptrocentrus kanti Belokobylskij 2023, but the first antennal flagellar segment is slender (vs. broad in P. kanti ), the second radiomedial cell of the forewing is submarginal, narrow (vs. rather broad), the interstitial nervulus, 1cu-a, (vs. p...

NEWS - Henrik Madsen's earwig ( Apachyus madseni Simonsen & Rasmussen sp. nov.) is reported based on a nearly complete 55 million year old fossil from the Ypresian Fur Formation in northwestern Denmark. The new fossil is not only a new addition to the mo-clay fauna, but also an extension of its historical biogeographic range. The last few decades have seen an increasing focus on the richness of the insect fossil record found in the Ypresian Fur Formation in northwestern Denmark. One insect order that has to some extent been spared from this surge in taxonomic knowledge from the site is the Dermaptera commonly known as earwigs. Now, Thomas Simonsen from the Natural History Museum Aarhus and Jan Rasmussen from the Mors Museum and colleagues report a new species of Dermaptera in Apachyus Serville as the first fossil record in the Apachyidae which currently consists of two species-poor genera and is distributed across the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australia and Central ...

NEWS - Leland Kitada dance fly ( Rhamphomyia kitadai sp. nov.), brown wings dance fly ( Rhamphomyia brunnipennis sp. nov.), beautiful dance fly ( Rhamphomyia decens sp. nov.) and wing-footed dance fly ( Rhamphomyia pennipes sp. nov.) from the Middle Eocene Kishenehn Formation are described as species new to science. Females of Empidinae often display sexual ornamentation, an adaptation in the animal kingdom in general, often associated with males, especially in vertebrates. Ornamentation of female Empidinae includes legs with rows of relatively large pennate scales, enlarged and/or darkly pigmented wings and an expanded abdominal pouch. The ornamentation makes the female appear larger, more fertile and therefore more attractive to potential mates. Given the rarity of female sexual ornamentation, especially Empidini, it has become a model system for studying this phenomenon. The known fossil record includes several genera from the mid-Jurassic era dominated by two genera, Empis and ...

NEWS - Pterosaurs, the first true flying vertebrates, played a significant role in Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems from about 252–66 million years ago. However, our understanding of their ability to move on land more broadly and their terrestrial paleoecology is limited. The researchers show a remarkably high degree of variation in pterosaur hands and feet, comparable to that observed in birds today, suggesting that pterosaurs adapted to a wide range of non-aerial locomotor ecologies throughout history. Early small-bodied, long-tailed (non-pterodactyliform) pterosaurs exhibited extreme modifications in hand and foot proportions indicative of a climbing lifestyle. In contrast, the hands and feet of short-tailed (pterodactyliform) pterosaurs typically exhibit morphology consistent with a more terrestrial locomotor ecology. "Early pterosaurs were highly specialised for climbing with modifications to their hands and feet, similar to today's climbing lizards and woodpeckers. Holdin...

NEWS - An ancient Devonian coelacanth has been remarkably well preserved in a remote location in Western Australia linked to increased tectonic activity. An international team of researchers analysed fossils of the primitive fish from the Gogo Formation of Ngamugawi wirngarri , which straddles a key transition period in the history of coelacanths, between the most primitive and more modern forms. The new fish species adds to the evidence for Earth’s evolutionary journey. Climate change, asteroid strikes and plate tectonics are all key subjects in the origins and extinctions of animals that played a major role in evolution. Is the world’s oldest ‘living fossil’ the coelacanth still evolving? “We found that plate tectonic activity had a major influence on the rate of coelacanth evolution. New species are more likely to have evolved during periods of increased tectonic activity when new habitats were divided and created,” says Alice Clement of Flinders University in Adelaide. The Late Dev...

NEWS - Scientists confirm the flight capabilities of giants in the ancient skies, with some pterosaur species flapping their wings while others soared like vultures. New finds include a new pterosaur with a wingspan of 5 meters (16 feet) and one of the most complete pterosaurs ever discovered from Afro-Arabia. Scientists have long debated whether the largest pterosaurs could fly at all. But extraordinary and rare three-dimensional fossils of two species of large-bodied azhdarchoid pterosaurs have led scientists to hypothesize that the largest pterosaurs not only could fly, but that their flight styles may have been different. Kierstin Rosenbach of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and her team detail the fossils from the late Cretaceous period (72-66 million years ago) that are remarkably preserved in three dimensions at two different sites in coastal environments on the edge of Afro-Arabia, an ancient landmass that included Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. “The excavation tea...

NEWS - Eukaryotes have evolved and dominated the biosphere, encompassing the vast majority of living species and the vast majority of biomass. The early evolution of eukaryotes marked a turning point for life on Earth. Biologically complex organisms diversified in the Proterozoic Eon over 539 million years ago and have been a fundamental question in evolutionary biology. Paleontologists have attempted to document the rise of eukaryotes with fossil evidence. The Proterozoic record has provided important insights into this biological radiation for the past 70 years. However, the delicate and microscopic nature of subcellular features has made it difficult to fossilize early eukaryotes. The chemical and genetic biomarker signatures of living eukaryotes today are the only complementary tools available to reconstruct the ancestry of eukaryotes. These data are used in parallel with molecular clocks and biomarkers from sedimentary organic matter to collectively enable researchers to reconst...

NEWS - Researchers show prehistoric sea cows were preyed upon by not just one predator, but two different carnivores, a crocodile and a shark, between 23 million and 11.6 million years ago or the Lower to Middle Miocene. The fossil descriptions reveal clues about the predation tactics of the ancient creatures and the broader food chain of the time. Evidence of trophic interactions is not rare in the fossil record, but is mostly represented by fragmentary fossils that show ambiguous signs, making it often challenging to distinguish signs of active predation from scavenging events. "Often when we observe predators in the wild, we find carcasses of prey that indicate their function as a food source for other animals as well, but the fossil record is much rarer," says Aldo Benites-Palomino, from the Department of Paleontology at Zurich. "Our previous research has identified sperm whales being preyed upon by several shark species and this new study highlights the importance...

NEWS - Ovules or winged seeds are widespread and essential for wind-borne dispersal. However, the earliest ovules in the Famennian of the Late Devonian are rarely known for their dispersal syndrome and are usually surrounded by a cupule. Researchers report a new species from the Xinhang fossils. A new taxon of Famennian ovules, Alasemenia tria , has three integumentary wings on each ovule. The prominent wings extend outward, fold inward along the abaxial side and enclose most of the nucellus. The ovules arise from the terminals on smooth dichotomous branches and lack a cupule. This species shows that the earliest ovule integument without a cupule has an evolutionary function related to photosynthetic nutrition and wind dispersal. Seed wings appeared earlier than other wind dispersal mechanisms such as hairs, pappus, three- or four-winged seeds and fewer winged seeds. Deming Wang from Peking University and his team conducted a mathematical analysis showing that three-winged seeds are ...

NEWS - A Kyrgyz-German paleontological team has unearthed the fossils of two specimens of a new species of predatory dinosaur near Tashkumyr in southwestern Kyrgyzstan in one of the most important finds in Central Asia. The new discovery is significant because Alpkarakush kyrgyzicus is the first theropod dinosaur in Central Asia. Theropod dinosaurs date back to the Mesozoic Era and include Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus and modern birds. Allosaurus was widespread during the Jurassic Period in North America and southwestern Europe, while Metriacanthosaurus lived in China. But so far, central Europe and East Asia have been terra incognita, meaning there is no trace of the Jurassic period. The first fossil remains were discovered in 2006 by Kyrgyz paleontologist Aizek Bakirov in a mountainous desert region near the city of Tashkumyr. The exposed Balabansai Formation sediments were deposited during the Middle Jurassic period about 165 million years ago. Several excavation operations between ...

NEWS - Tardigrades are indestructible, a superpower that helped them survive the deadliest mass extinction in Earth’s history. The microscopic creature, also called water bears and moss piglets, can withstand extreme heat, cold, pressure and radiation. They survived for 252 million years in a hostile environment through a process called cryptobiosis, in which most of the body’s water is lost and reabsorbed as metabolism slows down. Cryptobiosis occurred 359 million to 299 million years ago, before a deadly event known as the Permian extinction event that occurred about 252 million years ago and wiped out 96 percent of marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life. Cryptobiosis may have helped tardigrades survive the event. Marc Mapalo, Joanna Wolfe and Javier Ortega-Hernández of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University analyzed tardigrade fossils in amber and are the first to estimate when this ability evolved...

NEWS - Giant seed fossils from Borneo provide evidence of ancient plant migration from Asia to Australia. Fossils of an extinct legume have been found in Australia, suggesting that a tectonic plate collision between Asia and Australia millions of years ago led to an exchange of plants and animals, including the migration of the ancestor of the black bean from Asia to Australia. The fossil collection from southern Borneo includes three large beans, pollen samples, about 40 leaves and a variety of other fossils including bird tracks, marine invertebrates and turtle fossils. A team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University, the University of Alberta, Biostratigraphic Associates in the United Kingdom, the Bandung Institute of Technology, the University of Florida and the University of Iowa collected the fossils in 2014 from coal seams. The new report in the International Journal of Plant Sciences aims to fill a significant gap in the fossil record of plants from Southeast Asia a...

NEWS - Three new species of plate-thigh beetles that lived in the mid-Cretaceous show long-term evolutionary stasis with the same morphology as their living relatives. The three species, Eucinetus debilispinus , E. panghongae and E. zhenhuai , show that the genus has remained consistent for more than 100 million years. Researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, the University of Bristol, and American Museum of Natural History in New York describe fossils from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber that all represent the genus Eucinetus germar that is still alive today. The study provides an example of long-term evolutionary stasis with a subcortical lifestyle. It further suggests the role of stable cryptic microhabitats in the persistence of some lineages over long geological timescales. Many of the species in this genus are associated with leaf litter or decaying wood microhabitats, species living in relatively stable microenvironments and feeding on a consistent set...

NEWS - Palaeontologists have been able to measure the lifespan and growth rates of ancient animals and even when they reached sexual maturity. The Jurassic period appears to have been a crucial time for this change. The typical mammalian life history pattern, characterized by a high metabolic rate and a long nurturing phase, has evolved over millions of years. Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Bonn studied growth rings in fossilized tooth roots to determine the growth stages of Jurassic animals. This is the first time that researchers have been able to reconstruct the growth patterns of ancient mammals in such detail. Elis Newham from Queen Mary University and his team analysed the tooth roots of mammal species from the Early to Late Jurassic (200-150 million years ago) found at three separate sites. The fossils from Wales represent mammals from the Early Jurassic, while the fossils from Oxfordshire represent a variety of early mammals that lived ...

NEWS - An exceptionally rare and detailed fossil, Youti yuanshi , provides a glimpse into one of the earliest ancestors of modern insects, spiders, crabs and centipedes. It was buried more than 520 million years ago in the Cambrian period, when the major groups of today’s animals first evolved. The remarkable fossil of the euarthropod group that includes modern insects, spiders and crabs is a tiny larva no bigger than a poppy seed and has remarkably well-preserved internal organs. Martin Smith of Durham University and colleagues from Yunnan University used advanced synchrotron X-ray tomography scanning techniques at the Diamond Light Source, a UK national synchrotron science facility. The researchers produced 3D images of a miniature brain region, digestive glands, a primitive circulatory system and even nerve traces for the larva’s rudimentary legs and eyes. The fossil allowed the researchers to look beneath the skin of one of the earliest arthropod ancestors. The complexity of the ...