Category: Fossil Record

Science in the sunshine: Pensoft’s month of European conferences

Pensoft participated in five conferences across Germany and Italy in September 2023.

For the Pensoft team, September 2023 was a busy and exciting month filled with conferences. Travelling across Europe, they promoted journals, connected with the scientific community, and rewarded exceptional research with free article publications. 

Let’s take a look back at all the events of the past month.

Wildlife Research and Conservation 2023

Wildlife Research and Conservation 2023 took place in Berlin between the 9th and 11th of September. Jointly organised by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria and WWF Germany, it was a fantastic event, featuring an exchange of ideas between wildlife scientists from different disciplines related to mammalian species.

Image showing the WRC2023 logo and two women promoting Pensoft at a conference.
Pensoft representatives Mrs. Boriana Ovcharova and Mrs. Anna Sapundzhieva, ready to greet attendees in the sun.

The conference looked at evolutionary adaptations from the perspective of behavioural ecology, reproduction biology, genetics, physiology, as well as nature conservation. It particularly focused on the pressing issues of wildlife research and species conservation in the context of global environmental change. Most of the ≈100 participants were young scientists from more than 30 countries.

The Pensoft team greeted fellow attendees with an exhibition stand and presented the conservation and ecology-focused journals Neobiota, Nature Conservation, One Ecosystem, and Biodiversity Data Journal. Pensoft also advocated for EuropaBon, who are designing an EU-wide framework for monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem services, and REST-COAST, whose mission is to provide the tools to restore environmental degradation of rivers and coasts. Within both European-funded initiatives, Pensoft is a key dissemination partner that contributes expertise in science communication, scholarly publishing, and the development of digital tools and platforms.

Man holding a certificate.
Joao Pedro Meireles posing with his Best Poster award.

Pensoft presented Joao Pedro Meireles from Utrecht University with the Best Poster Award for his research on pair compatibility in okapis, entitling him to a free publication in one of Pensoft’s open-access journals.

“My study looked at pair compatibility in the zoo breeding programme of Okapi. During breeding introductions, sometimes the male becomes aggressive towards the female and we decided to investigate the potential factors. We ran a survey among all zoos that house the species in Europe and we found that differences in husbandry were linked to the aggressiveness performed by the males.”

Joao Pedro Meireles, Utrecht University

GfÖ Annual Meeting 2023

From the 12th to 16th of September, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research hosted the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in Leipzig, Germany. The meeting welcomed more than 1,100 participants from around the world, including scientists, policymakers, educators, and environmental enthusiasts.

This year’s meeting was held with the theme: “The future of biodiversity – overcoming barriers of taxa, realms and scales.” There was a particular emphasis on future challenges and opportunities facing biodiversity, and how to address and manage these in an interdisciplinary and integrative way. 

Woman standing beside man.
Mrs. Boriana Ovcharova (Pensoft) with Neobiota Editor-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Ingolf Kühn.

Conference participants were welcomed at the Pensoft stand, where they could learn more about the projects EuropaBon and SELINA, which deal with biodiversity, ecosystem and natural capital topics. 

The Pensoft team took great pleasure in talking to attendees about their fantastic journals focused on ecology and biodiversity, including Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal, Neobiota, Nature Conservation, One Ecosystem, Vegetation Classification and Survey and Research Ideas and Outcomes, as well as meeting with authors, reviewers and editors.

European Conference on Ecological Modelling

Also in Leipzig, the European Conference on Ecological Modelling took place between the 4th and 8th of September. The event focused on the transformation of how societies deal with natural resources in a world where biodiversity and ecosystem services are at high risk. 

The ECEM 2023 continued a series of conferences launched by the European chapter of ISEM, the International Society for Ecological Modelling. ISEM promotes the international exchange of ideas, scientific results, and general knowledge in the areas of systems’ analysis and simulations in ecology, and the application of ecological modelling for natural resource management.

Pensoft presented its innovative journals in the field of ecology and modelling, such as Nature Conservation, Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal and Neobiota, as well as the projects PoshBee and B-GOOD, which aim to help beekeepers and support healthy bee populations where Pensoft acts as the dissemination partner.

The Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung team presented a poster on the Formal Model format and potential new MiDox formats, unique publication types that can be submitted to Pensoft’s Food and Ecological Modelling Journal.

118th Congress of the Italian Botanical Society

Three men sitting before a projector screen at a conference.
Speakers at the 118th Congress of the Italian Botanical Society.

Pensoft was proud to sponsor the 118th Congress of the Italian Botanical Society, which took place in Pisa, Italy from the 13th to 16th of September. Experts in various fields of Botany gathered to share their research on the following topics:

  • Molecular and cell biology
  • Taxonomy, systematics and evolution
  • Biodiversity
  • Environmental monitoring and policies
  • Biotechnology and applied botany
  • Ecology

Pensoft awarded Emma Cocco, University of Cagliari, and Lucrezia Laccetti, University of Naples Federico II, a free article publication in any of Pensoft’s journals related to botany.  Additionally, Silvia Cannucci, University of Siena, and Flavia Guzzi received the Italian Botanical Society’s support for publishing papers in Italian Botanist for their excellent research.

Four people at a certificate presentation.
Best poster award, presented by Pensoft.

94th Annual Meeting of the Paläontologische Gesellschaft

Finally, between the 18th and 22nd of September, the 94th Annual Meeting of the Paläontologische Gesellschaft was held in Jena, Germany. Pensoft couldn’t make it in person, but still made sure to showcase journals publishing papers in palaeontology, especially Zitteliana and Fossil Record. The international meeting was a great success, and focused on cutting-edge research from palaeobiology, palaeontology, geobiology and related subjects.

Journals promoted by Pensoft at the 94th Annual Meeting of the Paläontologische Gesellschaft.

Summer may be well and truly over, but as a new academic year begins, Pensoft looks forward to attending more conferences, rewarding more incredible research, and connecting with more of the scientific community. Thank you to everyone who contributed to or engaged with Pensoft’s open-access journals this year, and here’s to a successful final quarter of 2023.

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Europe’s very own dinosaurs – the enigmatic Late Cretaceous rhabdodontids

Despite being widespread and abundant, these gregarious herbivores vanished in Western Europe around 69 million years ago due to environmental changes, while surviving longer in Eastern Europe.

When you think of dinosaurs, you might automatically imagine iconic dinosaurs as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. But at the same time when these were stomping on the ancient coastal plains of North America, some of their very distant cousins were reigning over Europe’s lands.

Life reconstructions and size comparison of three rhabdodontids. From left to right: Mochlodon suessi from eastern Austria (the smallest member of the group), Rhabdodon priscus from southern France (the largest member of the group), and Transylvanosaurus platycephalus from western Romania (the most recently named member of the group). Also shown is the silhoutte of a human (1.8 m tall) for scale. Reconstruction by Peter Nickolaus

During the Late Cretaceous (between 100 and 66 million years ago), Europe was an extensive archipelago with numerous small and large islands situated in a shallow tropical sea, the so-called Late Cretaceous European Archipelago. The dinosaur groups that lived on these islands were very different from those of other continents, often being much smaller than their mainland relatives. These European dinosaurs include small and medium-sized carnivorous theropods, armoured ankylosaurs, long-necked sauropods, duck-billed hadrosaurs, and rhabdodontids.

Skeletal reconstruction of Zalmoxes robustus. Scale bar: 20 cm

Arguably one of the most important of these European dinosaur groups is the family Rhabdodontidae, which groups together the most common medium-sized herbivores of the Late Cretaceous European Archipelago. A joint research team from the Universities of Tübingen (Germany), Budapest (Hungary) and Bucharest (Romania) recently reviewed what we know about these peculiar dinosaurs in a new paper published in the journal Fossil Record.

Generally, rhabdodontid dinosaurs were small to medium-sized animals with an overall body length of approximately 2–6 m. “They were probably habitually bipedal herbivores, characterised by a rather stocky build, with strong hind limbs, short forelimbs, a long tail, and a comparatively large, triangular skull that tapers anteriorly and ends in a narrow snout,” explains Felix Augustin, lead author of the study in Fossil Record.

“They had a relatively robust skull with strong jaws, large teeth and a pointy beak that was covered in keratin, demonstrating that these dinosaurs were well-adapted to eating tough plants.”

In some instances, fossil remains of several individuals of different ages have been found together, indicating that they were gregarious.

Although they died out well before the mass extinction in Western Europe (about 69 million years ago), potentially due to environmental changes that affected the plants they fed on, they survived much longer in Eastern Europe and were among the last non-avian dinosaurs still present before the end of the Cretaceous (66 million years ago).

Interestingly, fossils of rhabdodontids have only been found in Europe and only in rocks ranging in age from 86–66 million years ago, so they were endemic to the Late Cretaceous European Archipelago.

The group currently comprises nine different species from five European countries (France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, and Romania).

Palaeogeographic map of Europe during the latest Cretaceous (late Campanian), with the location of the most important rhabdodontid-bearing assemblages. 1 Transylvania, western Romania. 2 Iharkút, western Hungary. 3 Muthmannsdorf, eastern Austria. 4 Eastern southern France. 5 Western southern France. 6 Northern Spain. 7 Central Spain.

“The first rhabdodontid species was scientifically named more than 150 years ago and the last one as recently as November 2022, so, although the group looks back to a long research history, we still have much to learn about it,” says Felix Augustin.

“Generally, our portraying of the world of dinosaurs is heavily biased towards the well-known North-American and Asian dinosaur faunas,” he adds.

Type specimens of some rhabdodontid species. A. The original drawing of the lectotype of Rhabdodon priscus, MPLM 30, a partial left dentary. The specimen has since deteriorated (Pincemaille-Quillevere 2002). Modified after Matheron (1869). B. Holotype of Rhabdodon septimanicus, MDE D-30, an incomplete right dentary. Photo kindly provided by Eric Buffetaut. C. Lectotype of Mochlodon suessi, PIUW 2349/2, a right dentary. D. Holotype of Mochlodon vorosi, MTM V 2010.105.1, a left dentary. E. Holotype of Zalmoxes robustus, NHMUK R.3392, a right dentary. Photo kindly provided by János Magyar. F. Holotype right dentary of Zalmoxes shqiperorum, NHMUK R.4900. Note that the holotype of Z. shqiperorum also comprises several postcranial elements that presumably belong to the same individual as the dentary. Photo kindly provided by János Magyar.

Dinosaur fossils from the Late Cretaceous are much rarer in Europe than in North America or Asia, and thus far no complete skeleton of a rhabdodontid has been described. Even though they were so abundant and common in the Upper Cretaceous of Europe, several key aspects about them remain poorly known, including their detailed body proportions, their posture and locomotion, as well as their feeding behaviour.

“In the past decades, a wealth of new, and often well-preserved, rhabdodontid fossils has been discovered throughout Europe, the majority of which still remains to be studied,” says Felix Augustin. “A joint research project is currently underway to study the available fossil material in order to gain new insights into the evolution and lifestyle of these fascinating yet still poorly known dinosaurs.”

Original source:

Augustin FJ, Ősi A, Csiki-Sava Z (2023) The Rhabdodontidae (Dinosauria, Ornithischia), an enigmatic dinosaur group endemic to the Late Cretaceous European Archipelago. Fossil Record 26(2): 171-189. https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.26.108967

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Pensoft among the first 27 publishers to share prices & services via the Journal Comparison Service by Plan S

All journals published by Pensoft – each using the publisher’s self-developed ARPHA Platform – provide extensive and transparent information about their costs and services in line with the Plan S principles.

In support of transparency and openness in scholarly publishing and academia, the scientific publisher and technology provider Pensoft joined the Journal Comparison Service (JCS) initiative by cOAlition S, an alliance of national funders and charitable bodies working to increase the volume of free-to-read research. 

As a result, all journals published by Pensoft – each using the publisher’s self-developed ARPHA Platform – provide extensive and transparent information about their costs and services in line with the Plan S principles.

The JCS was launched to aid libraries and library consortia – the ones negotiating and participating in Open Access agreements with publishers – by providing them with everything they need to know in order to determine whether the prices charged by a certain journal are fair and corresponding to the quality of the service. 

According to cOAlition S, an increasing number of libraries and library consortia from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australia have registered with the JCS over the past year since the launch of the portal in September 2021.

While access to the JCS is only open to librarians, individual researchers may also make use of the data provided by the participating publishers and their journals. 

This is possible through an integration with the Journal Checker Tool, where researchers can simply enter the name of the journal of interest, their funder and affiliation (if applicable) to check whether the scholarly outlet complies with the Open Access policy of the author’s funder. A full list of all academic titles that provide data to the JCS is also publicly available. By being on the list means a journal and its publisher do not only support cOAlition S, but they also demonstrate that they stand for openness and transparency in scholarly publishing.

“We are delighted that Pensoft, along with a number of other publishers, have shared their price and service data through the Journal Comparison Service. Not only are such publishers demonstrating their commitment to open business models and cultures but are also helping to build understanding and trust within the research community.”

said Robert Kiley, Head of Strategy at cOAlition S. 

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About cOAlition S:

On 4 September 2018, a group of national research funding organisations, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and 10 principles. Read more on the cOAlition S website.

About Plan S:

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms. Read more on the cOAlition S website.

Oldest Pterodactylus fossil found in Germany

The fossil, just described in a study in the journal Fossil Record, is about one million years older than other Pterodactylus specimens.

Pterosaurs, the flying reptiles of the dinosaur era, originated in the Late Triassic (227 million years ago) and became extinct at the end-Cretaceous extinction event (66 million years ago). With wing spans ranging from 1 to 12 meters, they dominated the world’s skies for more than 160 million years.

The first described and named pterosaur – and namesake of the whole group – is Pterodactylus from the famous Solnhofen Limestone of Bavaria, southern Germany. Originally described in 1784 by the Italian naturalist Cosimo Alessandro Collini, the fossil was considered to be an aquatic animal for 25 years, before Georges Cuvier found out it was a flying reptile belonging to a new, previously unrecognized group.

The oldest specimen of this iconic pterosaur was recently found near Painten, a small town in the southern part of the Franconian Alb in central Bavaria. The fossil, described in a study in the journal Fossil Record, is about one million years older than other Pterodactylus specimens.

The specimen was unearthed in 2014 during excavations in an active limestone quarry. It took more than 120 hours of meticulous mechanical work using pneumatic tools and needles before the researchers could study it. The research team behind the discovery are Felix Augustin, Andreas Matzke, Panagiotis Kampouridis and Josephina Hartung from the University of Tübingen (Germany) and Raimund Albersdörfer from the Dinosaurier Museum Altmühltal (Germany).

“The rocks of the quarry, which yielded the new Pterodactylus specimen, consist of silicified limestone that has been dated to the upper Kimmeridgian stage (around 152 million years ago)”, explains Felix Augustin of the University of Tübingen, who is the lead author of the study. “Previously, Pterodactylus had only been found in younger rocks of southern Germany belonging to the Tithonian stage that follows after the Kimmeridgian”.

The specimen is a complete, well-preserved skeleton of a small-sized individual. “Only a very small portion of the left mandible as well as of the left and right tibia is missing. Otherwise, the skeleton is nearly perfectly preserved with every bone present and in its roughly correct anatomical position”, the researchers write in their study.

With a 5-cm-long skull, the Painten Pterodactylus represents a rare “sub-adult” individual. “Generally, the Pterodactylus specimens are not evenly distributed across the full size range but predominantly fall into distinct size-classes that are separated by marked gaps. The specimen from Painten is a rare representative of the first gap between the small and large sizes,” explains Augustin. “The Painten Pterodactylus was of an intermediate, and rarely found, ontogenetic age at the time of its death, between two consecutive year-classes.”

The Painten quarry has yielded many other “exquisitely preserved fossils”, including ichthyosaurs, turtles, marine and terrestrial crocodile-relatives, and dinosaurs.  Many of them, like this new pterosaur specimen, are on display in the new Dinosaurier Museum Altmühltal in Denkendorf (Bavaria, Germany).

Research article:

Augustin FJ, Kampouridis P, Hartung J, Albersdörfer R, Matzke AT (2022) The geologically oldest specimen of Pterodactylus: a new exquisitely preserved skeleton from the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) Plattenkalk deposits of Painten (Bavaria, Germany). Fossil Record 25(2): 331-343. https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.25.90692

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Pensoft’s ARPHA Publishing Platform integrates with OA Switchboard to streamline reporting to funders of open research

By the time authors open their inboxes to the message their work is online, a similar notification will have also reached their research funder.

Image credit: OA Switchboard.

By the time authors – who have acknowledged third-party financial support in their research papers submitted to a journal using the Pensoft-developed publishing platform: ARPHA – open their inboxes to the congratulatory message that their work has just been published and made available to the wide world, a similar notification will have also reached their research funder.

This automated workflow is already in effect at all journals (co-)published by Pensoft and those published under their own imprint on the ARPHA Platform, as a result of the new partnership with the OA Switchboard: a community-driven initiative with the mission to serve as a central information exchange hub between stakeholders about open access publications, while making things simpler for everyone involved.

All the submitting author needs to do to ensure that their research funder receives a notification about the publication is to select the supporting agency or the scientific project (e.g. a project supported by Horizon Europe) in the manuscript submission form, using a handy drop-down menu. In either case, the message will be sent to the funding body as soon as the paper is published in the respective journal.

“At Pensoft, we are delighted to announce our integration with the OA Switchboard, as this workflow is yet another excellent practice in scholarly publishing that supports transparency in research. Needless to say, funding and financing are cornerstones in scientific work and scholarship, so it is equally important to ensure funding bodies are provided with full, prompt and convenient reports about their own input.”

comments Prof Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft and ARPHA.

 

“Research funders are one of the three key stakeholder groups in OA Switchboard and are represented in our founding partners. They seek support in demonstrating the extent and impact of their research funding and delivering on their commitment to OA. It is great to see Pensoft has started their integration with OA Switchboard with a focus on this specific group, fulfilling an important need,”

adds Yvonne Campfens, Executive Director of the OA Switchboard.

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About the OA Switchboard:

A global not-for-profit and independent intermediary established in 2020, the OA Switchboard provides a central hub for research funders, institutions and publishers to exchange OA-related publication-level information. Connecting parties and systems, and streamlining communication and the neutral exchange of metadata, the OA Switchboard provides direct, indirect and community benefits: simplicity and transparency, collaboration and interoperability, and efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

About Pensoft:

Pensoft is an independent academic publishing company, well known worldwide for its novel cutting-edge publishing tools, workflows and methods for text and data publishing of journals, books and conference materials.

All journals (co-)published by Pensoft are hosted on Pensoft’s full-featured ARPHA Publishing Platform and published in a way that ensures their content is as FAIR as possible, meaning that it is effortlessly readable, discoverable, harvestable, citable and reusable by both humans and machines.

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30-million-year-old Baltic amber reveals lacewing that looks like mantis

The insect, described as Mantispa? damzenogedanica, helped reveal important insights into the morphology of these fascinating insects and how it changed through history

Guest blog post by Viktor Baranov

Lacewings (Neuroptera) are mostly known for representatives such as green lacewings or antlions, which are distinguished by their appearance – large eyes and four long wings – but also by their predatory larvae, which play an important role as pest control agents in agriculture. But few non-specialists know that some lacewings can look a lot like praying mantises.

Mantispa? damzenogedanica, general overview. Photo by V. Baranov

Mantis lacewings (Mantispida) are among the most charismatic, though rather poorly known representatives of the true lacewings. They look like small- to medium-sized praying mantises. Mantis lacewing are 5-47 mm long, and all of them have prominent grasping (also called raptorial) legs. This superficial resemblance is due to the convergent evolution of the shape in true mantises and mantis lacewings. Convergent evolution is a process of organisms evolving similar traits, due to their adaptation to the similar conditions – i.e. hummingbirds and sunbirds live on different continents but look very similar due to their similar lifestyle. This type of evolution has led to the similar shape of the grasping legs, which act as a couple of snap traps for unsuspecting prey. 

Going back to the Cretaceous, Mantis lacewings have a long geological record. There are plenty of Mesozoic records of them and their relatives, such as thorny lacewings (Rachiberothidae) and beaded lacewings (Berothidae), totalling  105 recorded specimens. Curiously, there is a clear gap in mantis lacewings records from the Cainozoic.

Until recently, no adult mantis lacewings had been recorded from Baltic amber. In a single case, fossil parasitoid larvae of mantis lacewings were found attached to their host, a spider.

This changed last year, when a beautiful specimen of the mantis lacewing, almost 2 cm long, was brought to our attention by a private amber collector and esteemed supporter of palaeoentomology research – Jonas Damzen from Vilnus, Lithuania. The specimen was found at the Yantarny mine in Kaliningrad oblast, Russia.

By analysing the morphology of this beautiful specimen, we found out that it is closely related to the extant genus Mantispa. However, it was impossible to conclusively corroborate its affinity, because important characters such as rear wing venation and genitalia were obscured by so called “verlummung” – a white film, which covers many of the fossils in Baltic amber.

Morphospace plot showing changes in the diversity of raptorial appendages over geological time. Image credit J. Haug/ V. Baranov

So, to deal with this uncertainty, we designated this specimen as “probable Mantispa” (Mantispa?). In our research article published in the journal Fossil Record, we gave it the name Mantispa? damzenogedanica. The specific epithet is a combination of ‘Damzen’, honouring Jonas Damzen, who found, prepared, and made the specimen available, and ‘gedanicum’, relative to one of the Latin names for Gdańsk, Poland, where the specimen is housed in the Museum of Gdańsk.

Except for being an impressive, large, imposing insect fossil of the mantis lacewing, and the first one in Baltic amber at that, M.? damzenogedanica also present an intriguing question: why are so few mantis lacewings recorded from this fossil deposit, which is among the best-studied in the world?

Baltic amber deposits were formed in the mid-to-late Eocene epoch (38-33.9 MYA) in Northern Europe. Current consensus on the climate of the area at the time stands that it was not dissimilar to the south of the North American eastern seaboard, for example the Carolinas or Florida’s Panhandle: it was warm-temperate. Such climate is in fact perfect for extant mantis lacewings, so it is logical to suggest that unsuitable climate was not the main reason for the rarity of these animals in Baltic amber.

Analysing the diversity of the shape of mantis lacewings, we found a surprising trend – since the Cretaceous, the diversity in the shape of their legs has decreased. While the shape of the raptorial legs in the Cretaceous was characterised by eclectic, amazing diversity, later mantis lacewings have a rather uniform shape of raptorial legs.

We are not sure what may have caused this decrease. We think that drastic biotic changes after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs) may have led to the environment becoming less conductive to mantis lacewings, which in turn decreased their diversity. Thus, it is likely that the rarity of mantis lacewings is simply a reflection of the decline in their diversity and abundance after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. 

Younger amber deposits (i.e. Dominican amber), and, of course, extant fauna display significant species diversity, but the diversity of shape never recovered after the Cretaceous. This new mantis lacewing from Baltic amber offers us a rare glimpse into a time when, in the world after dinosaurs, lacewings got a little less diverse and charismatic.

Research article: Baranov V, Pérez-de la Fuente R, Engel MS, Hammel JU, Kiesmüller C, Hörnig MK, Pazinato PG, Stahlecker C, Haug C, Haug JT (2022) The first adult mantis lacewing from Baltic amber, with an evaluation of the post-Cretaceous loss of morphological diversity of raptorial appendages in Mantispidae. Fossil Record 25(1): 11-24. https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.25.80134