Schwermann A.H., dos Santos Rolo T., Caterino M.S., Bechly G., Schmied H., Baumbach T., van de Kamp T.
in eLife, 5 (2016), e12129. DOI:10.7554/eLife.12129
Abstract
© Schwermann et al. External and internal morphological characters of extant and fossil organisms are crucial to establishing their systematic position, ecological role and evolutionary trends. The lack of internal characters and soft-tissue preservation in many arthropod fossils, however, impedes comprehensive phylogenetic analyses and species descriptions according to taxonomic standards for Recent organisms. We found well-preserved three-dimensional anatomy in mineralized arthropods from Paleogene fissure fillings and demonstrate the value of these fossils by utilizing digitally reconstructed anatomical structure of a hister beetle. The new anatomical data facilitate a refinement of the species diagnosis and allowed us to reject a previous hypothesis of close phylogenetic relationship to an extant congeneric species. Our findings suggest that mineralized fossils, even those of macroscopically poor preservation, constitute a rich but yet largely unexploited source of anatomical data for fossil arthropods.
Kopmann A.et al.: UFO – A scalable platform for high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging in 2016 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium, Medical Imaging Conference and Room-Temperature Semiconductor Detector Workshop, NSS/MIC/RTSD 2016, 2017-January (2017) 8069895.
Zuber M.et al.: Augmented laminography, a correlative 3D imaging method for revealing the inner structure of compressed fossils in Scientific Reports, 7 (2017) 41413.
Schmelzle S.et al.: The NOVA project: Maximizing beam time efficiency through synergistic analyses of SRμCT data in Proceedings of SPIE – The International Society for Optical Engineering, 10391 (2017) 103910P.
Tissier J.et al.: Exceptional soft tissues preservation in a mummified frog-eating Eocene salamander in PeerJ, 2017 (2017) e3861.
Osés G.et al.: Deciphering the preservation of fossil insects: A case study from the Crato Member, Early Cretaceous of Brazil in PeerJ, 2016 (2016) e2756.
Alekseev V.et al.: Description of two clown beetles (Coleoptera: Staphyliniformia: Hydrophiloidea: Histeridae) from Baltic amber (Cenozoic, Paleogene, Eocene) in Baltic Journal of Coleopterology, 16 (2016) 27-35.