Title:
Oldest fossil record of larval neuropterans found in Inner Mongolia
Author:
Bob Yirka
Published:
Phys.org, 15 February 2023
From the article:
A team of paleontologists at the Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, working with a colleague from the State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, both in China, has identified the oldest known fossil record of larval neuropterans.
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Title:
Giant Jurassic dragon lacewing larvae with lacustrine palaeoecology represent the oldest fossil record of larval neuropterans
Authors:
Xuheng Du, Kecheng Niu & Tong Bao
Published:
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 15 February 2023
Abstract:
Neuropterans seem to be less specious among holometabolans, while they are in fact the relicts of a diverse group from the Mesozoic era. Their early radiation resulted in great family level morphological heterogeneity of extant neuropterans, especially of their larvae. The earliest previously reported fossil larvae of this group were from the Early Cretaceous, where they already showed high taxonomic diversity and an extremely wide range of variations in morphotypes. In this work, the earliest record of the larva of the neuropteran Palaeoneurorthus baii gen. et sp. nov. from the Middle Jurassic Daohugou Beds of China is described. The larvae, which have large and elongated bodies, straight stylets with curved apices, an extremely elongated cervix and an extended anterior lobe of pronotum, are placed in Nevrorthidae. The elongated cervix is probably a specialized adaptation for hunting small organisms. The palaeoenvironment of these larvae indicates that larvae of Nevrorthidae have exhibited stable aquatic ecology since the Middle Jurassic, and underwent a possible shift from lakes to more lotic yet constricted modern mountain rivulet habitats over time.