Palaeoentomology, a young old field of science

NEL, A., PETRULEVICIUS, J. F. Y AZAR, D.

Fossil Insects

Société Entomologique de France

Lugar: París; Año: 2010; p. 1 - 3

The study of fossil insects is an ancient part of entomology with publications dating already from the beginning of 19th century (Berendt 1830, 1836; Boisduval 1840; Curtis 1829a,b; Schlotheim 1820). Also insect ichnofossils were considered in 19th century prior to the fi rst discussions about palaeoenvironments and taphonomy (Bravard 1854; Ameghino 1880; Nicolas 1889). Samuel Hubbard Scudder and Charles Brongniart were the two main ‘fathers’ of palaeoentomology (Scudder 1890a,b; Brongniart 1893). 19th century researches were abundant enough as Scudder (1891)’s index included 744 pages. Handlirsch (1906–1908)’s publications demonstrated as well that the number of described fossil Hexapoda was already considerable at the beginning of 20th century. Th e Carboniferous and the Cenozoic insects were already relatively well documented, but the Cretaceous faunas were underinvestigated. Very important progress in the knowledge of the fossil insect record was made thanks to the eff orts of the Russian school developed by Andrey V. Martynov in the years 1920, and that is still very active. In the years 1980–2008, Jarmila Kukalová-Peck contributed a lot in demonstrating the importance of the fossils in the reconstruction of the ground plan structures and morphology of the Hexapoda (see her paper in 2008 summarizing her contributions). Nevertheless Willy Hennig’s phylogenetic method could be considered as the major recent conceptual contribution in entomology and palaeoentomology. Hennig in the years 1950–1980 was a dipterologist who developed very important studies on fossil fl ies. He demonstrated that it is possible to integrate the fossil insects in the modern approach of systematic phylogeny (Hennig 1981).