High-resolution fossil scans give detailed portraits of
305-million-year-old juvenile insects.
Researchers have constructed three-dimensional (3D)
portraits of two 305-million-year-old insect nymphs by scanning their fossils
with X-rays. The results, reported today in PLoS ONE1, are the most detailed
pictures yet of juvenile insects of that period.
One of the specimens, characterized by sharp spines on its
body and head, belongs to an unknown species and genus. The authors have called
it Anebos phrixos, from the Greek meaning "young and bristling". The
other is similar to a modern cockroach. But exact classification of both
organisms is complicated — their adult counterparts could have been very
different, owing to the changes insects undergo throughout their life cycles.