Viktor Baranov
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Fossils of lace -winged grasshopper insects trapped in amber.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—Not so long ago, researchers studied beams vein (amber) is 30 million years old. Because the resin contains fossils insect lace wings that look like Grasshoppers worship with big eyes and four long wings. This insect has a long history of resembling a praying mantis as a result of convergent evolution. Both insects evolved the same traits when they adapted to the same conditions in their environment.
This is the first adult male lacewing insect fossil discovered by scientists from the Cainozoic geological era, although the fossil record suggests that it dates back to the Cretaceous period. This new finding aids in the morphology of the raptorial forelimbs across extant and extinct diversity lineages.
At first glance, this fossil in Baltic amber may look like a praying mantis, but further analysis showed that it was a lace-winged grasshopper (Mantispidae) belonging to the true lace-winged grasshopper (Neuroptera). It is estimated that the fossils date back to the Cretaceous period about 145 million years ago. The lacewing insect is a small predatory insect whose larvae are sometimes used in agriculture as a pest control agent, according to the OISAT pest control website.
“Here we report the first adult Mantispidae of Baltic ambers and place them within a larger framework of quantitative morphology of raptorial forelimbs across lineages in terms of extant and extinct diversity,” write the researchers. The results of this study were published in the journal Fossil Record on February 7, 2022 with the title The first adult mantis lacewing from Baltic amber, with an evaluation of the post-Cretaceous loss of morphological diversity of raptorial appendages in Mantispidae.
Baranov et. al, Fossil Record, 2022
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3D view of an insect found trapped in amber.
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Researchers led by Viktor Baranov from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München discovered Baltic amber in the Yantamy mine area of Kaliningrad oblast, Russia, last year. After careful morphological analysis, paleontologists discovered that it was closely related to the extant lace-winged grasshopper.
But the venations of the hind wings and genitals are obscured by “delusion“, i.e. a white layer overlying many fossils of Baltic amber, making it impossible to conclusively confirm the insect’s identity. So they designated the specimen as a possible Mantispa and named it as Mantispa damzenogedanica in their paper.
The specimen, nearly 2 centimeters long, was studied through a combination of techniques including microscopy and X-ray microtomography, in which X-rays are used to build cross-sectional and 3D models of an organism.
This research raises a number of questions about how the Mantispidae may have evolved over the last 66 million years, when the Cainozoic period began, and why so few of them have been preserved from this particular era.
“These morphometric comparisons serve as proxies for the extent of ecology and predatory behavior in Mantispidae over various episodes of their evolutionary history,” the researchers wrote.
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Baltic amber deposits preserve a history dating back more than 34 million years in northern Europe, when the region was moderately warm and temperate. There’s no way the inhospitable conditions are the reason why so few grasshopper wings are left for us to find.
“Such a climate is actually perfect for the remaining grasshopper wings,” Baranov commented, as reported Phys.org “So it is reasonable to suggest that an unsuitable climate is not the main reason for the rarity of these animals in the Baltic amber.” he added.
They analyzed how the shape of the grasshopper’s wings changed over time. The team found a surprising trend, since the Cretaceous era, the diversity of their foot shapes has decreased. “While the Cretaceous raptorial leg shape is characterized by an eclectic and astonishing diversity, the lace-wing locust wing has a somewhat uniform raptorial leg shape,” explains Baranov.
Scientists continue to make exciting discoveries about these yellow time machines, and this isn’t the first time we’ve been able to learn more about this group of insects, known as Neuroptera, from their remains.
“We think that drastic biotic changes following the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs) may have caused the environment to become less conductive for the grasshopper wings, which in turn decreased its diversity.” Baranov said.
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