Wing of the brand-new types Okanagrion hobani, from the McAbee fossil website in British Columbia, a damselfly-like bug of the brand-new suborder Cephalozygoptera. Credit: Copyright Zootaxa, utilized by approval
SFU-led research study group reveals how fossil dragonfly family members have actually been misclassified due to their striking resemblance.
For more than 150 years, researchers have actually been improperly categorizing a group of fossil bugs as damselflies, the familiar cousins of dragonflies that sweep around wetlands consuming mosquitoes. While they are noticeably comparable, these fossils have actually unusually formed heads, which scientists have actually constantly credited to distortion arising from the fossilization procedure.
Now, nevertheless, a group of scientists led by Simon Fraser University (SFU) paleontologist Bruce Archibald has actually found they aren’t damselflies at all, however represent a significant brand-new insect group carefully associated to them.
The findings, released today in Zootaxa, reveal that the unique shape of the bug’s non-protruding, rounded eyes, set near the head, are the specifying functions of a suborder associated to damselflies and dragonflies that the scientists have actually called Cephalozygoptera.
“When we began finding these fossils in British Columbia and Washington State, we also thought at first they must be damselflies,” states Archibald.
But on closer assessment, the group observed they looked like a fossil that German paleontologist Hermann Hagen discussed in 1858. Hagen set the precedent of connecting the fossil to the damselfly suborder regardless of its various head shape, which didn’t fit with damselflies at all.
Damselflies have brief and broad heads with eyes distinctly extending far to each side. Hagen’s fossil, nevertheless, had a strangely rounded head and eyes. But he presumed this distinction was incorrect, triggered by distortion throughout fossilization.
Wings of the brand-new types Okanagrion threadgillae, from the Republic fossil website in northern Washington, a damselfly-like bug of the brand-new suborder Cephalozygoptera. Credit: Copyright Zootaxa, utilized by approval
“Paleontologists since Hagen had written that these were damselflies with distorted heads,” Archibald states. “A few hesitated, but still assigned them to the damselfly suborder.”
The SFU-led group, consisting of Robert Cannings of the Royal British Columbia Museum, Robert Erickson and Seth Bybee of Brigham Young University and SFU’s Rolf Mathewes, sorted through 162 years of clinical documents and found that numerous comparable specimens have actually been discovered given that Hagen’s time.
They experienced a eureka minute when they understood the odd heads of their brand-new fossils were, in truth, their real shape.
The scientists utilized the fossil’s specifying head shape to call the brand-new suborder Cephalozygoptera, significance “head damselfly.”
The earliest recognized types of Cephalozygoptera lived amongst dinosaurs in the Cretaceous age in China, and were last understood to exist about 10 million years earlier in France and Spain.
Paleontologist Bruce Archibald doing fieldwork at the McAbee fossil website in southern British Columbia, where numerous specimens were found of the brand-new insect suborder Cephalozygoptera. Light-colored fossil-bearing sediments are exposed on the hillside behind him. Credit: Bruce Archibald
“They were important elements in food webs of wetlands in ancient British Columbia and Washington about 50 million years ago, after the extinction of the dinosaurs,” states Archibald. “Why they declined and went extinct remains a mystery.”
The group called 16 brand-new types of Cephalozygoptera. Some of the fossils were discovered on the conventional land of the Colville Indian people of northern Washington, therefore Archibald and his coauthors worked together with tribal seniors to call a brand-new household of them. They called the household “Whetwhetaksidae,” from the word “whetwhetaks,” indicating dragonfly-like bugs in the Colville individuals’s language.
Archibald has actually invested 30 years combing the fossil-rich deposits of southern British Columbia and northern interior Washington. To date, in partnership with others, he has actually found and called more than 80 brand-new types from the location.
Reference: “The Cephalozygoptera, a new, extinct suborder of Odonata with new taxa from the early Eocene Okanagan Highlands, western North America” by S. Bruce Archibald, Robert A. Cannings, Robert J. Erickson, Seth M. Bybee, Rolf W. Mathewes, 24 February 2021, Zootaxa.
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4934.1
