Paleo Profile: The Nonsense Beetle

Paleo Profile: The Nonsense Beetle

5 years ago
Anonymous $roN-uuAfLt

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/paleo-profile-the-nonsense-beetle/

Naming a new species is a complicated task. There are entire tomes filled with regulations about proper taxonomic protocol, with biologists of various sorts navigating those rules in the hopes that their name will be both evocative and lasting. That's what makes a newly-named fossil beetle a bit of an oddity.

The Cretaceous insect, preserved in 99 million-year-old amber, is remarkable in its own right. As paleontologist Shûhei Yamamoto and colleagues note, Kekveus jason is now the oldest known member of featherwing beetles - tiny insects with fluffy, parachute-like hindwings. But what I want to highlight here is this arthropod's name.