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Amber Specimens Reveal Origin of Long Mouthpart of Scorpionflies
Mesopsychoid scorpionflies are peculiar Mesozoic insects with a distinctly elongate mouthpart and are considered to be a critical group of pollinators prior to the rise of angiosperms.
　　A new genus found from 99-million-year-old Burmese amber reveals the origin of scorpionflies’ long mouthpar...

Researchers Say Animal-like Embryos Preceded Animal Appearance
Proposed life cycle of Caveasphaera (Image by NIGPAS)
　　Animals evolved from single-celled ancestors before diversifying into 30-40 distinct anatomical designs. When and how animal ancestors made the transition from single-celled microbes to complex multicellular organisms is unclear. But a new...

Earliest Evidence of Insect-angiosperm Pollination Found in Cretaceous Burmese Amber
Most of our food is from angiosperms, while more than 90% of angiosperms require insect pollination – making this pollination method hugely important. Nevertheless, scientists have long been unclear as to when insect pollination first appeared.
　　Now, however, an international research group f...

Death March of Segmented Animal Unravels Critical Evolutionary Puzzle
Yilingia spiciformis body fossil (left), trace (right), and artist’s reconstruction (middle). (Image by NIGPAS)
　　The death march of a segmented bilaterian animal unearthed from ~550-million-year-old rocks in China shows that the oldest mobile and segmented animals evolved by the Ediacaran Per...

Coastal Organisms Trapped in 99-Million-Year-Old Amber

Chitinozoans May Be Fossils of Individual Microorganisms Rather than Metazoan Eggs: Study
Chitinozoans are organic-walled microfossils widely recorded in Ordovician to Devonian (about 400 million years ago) marine sediments and usually shaped like "bottles". Their biological affinity remains unknown, but most commonly, they are interpreted as eggs of marine metazoans.
　　Recently, re...

Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology Chinese Academy of Sciences

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