The Pterygota are a subclass of insects that includes all winged insects and the orders that are secondarily wingless.
Ensifera is a suborder of insects that includes the various types of crickets and their allies including: true crickets, camel crickets, bush crickets or katydids, grigs, weta and Cooloola monsters. This and the suborder Caelifera make up the order Orthoptera. Ensifera is believed to be a more ancient group than Caelifera, with its origins in the Carboniferous period, the split having occurred at the end of the Permian period. Unlike the Caelifera, the Ensifera contain numerous members that are partially carnivorous, feeding on other insects, as well as plants.
The Archaeognatha are an order of apterygotes, known by various common names such as jumping bristletails. Among extant insect taxa they are some of the most evolutionarily primitive; they appeared in the Middle Devonian period at about the same time as the arachnids. Specimens that closely resemble extant species have been found as both body and trace fossils in strata from the remainder of the Paleozoic Era and more recent periods. For historical reasons an alternative name for the order is Microcoryphia.
The most recent understanding of the evolution of insects is based on studies of the following branches of science: molecular biology, insect morphology, paleontology, insect taxonomy, evolution, embryology, bioinformatics and scientific computing. It is estimated that the class of insects originated on Earth about 480 million years ago, in the Ordovician, at about the same time terrestrial plants appeared. Insects are thought to have evolved from a group of crustaceans. The first insects were landbound, but about 400 million years ago in the Devonian period one lineage of insects evolved flight, the first animals to do so. The oldest insect fossil has been proposed to be Rhyniognatha hirsti, estimated to be 400 million years old, but the insect identity of the fossil has been contested. Global climate conditions changed several times during the history of Earth, and along with it the diversity of insects. The Pterygotes underwent a major radiation in the Carboniferous while the Endopterygota underwent another major radiation in the Permian.
Alexandr Pavlovich Rasnitsyn is a Russian entomologist, expert in palaeoentomology, and Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation (2001). His scientific interests are centered on the palaeontology, phylogeny, and taxonomy of hymenopteran insects and insects in general. He has also studied broader biological problems such as evolutionary theory, the principles of phylogenetics, taxonomy, nomenclature, and palaeoecology. He has published over 300 articles and books in several languages. In August 2008 he was awarded the Distinguished Research Medal of the International Society of Hymenopterists.
Zygentoma are an order in the class Insecta, and consist of about 550 known species. The Zygentoma include the so-called silverfish or fishmoths, and the firebrats. A conspicuous feature of the order are the three long caudal filaments. The two lateral filaments are cerci, and the medial one is an epiproct or appendix dorsalis. In this they resemble the Archaeognatha, although the cerci of Zygentoma, unlike in the latter order, are nearly as long as the epiproct.
Monte San Giorgio is a Swiss mountain and UNESCO World Heritage Site near the border between Switzerland and Italy. It is part of the Lugano Prealps, overlooking Lake Lugano in the Swiss Canton of Ticino.
Callibrachion is an extinct genus of caseid synapsids that lived in east-central France during the Lower Permian (Asselian). The holotype and only known specimen (MNHN.F.AUT490) is represented by an almost complete postcranial skeleton associated with skull fragments discovered at the end of the 19th century in the Permian Autun basin in Saône-et-Loire department, in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region. It belongs to an immature individual measuring less than 1.50 m in length. Callibrachion was long considered a junior synonym of the genus Haptodus and classified among the sphenacodontid pelycosaurs. In 2015, a new study found that Callibrachion was a different animal from Haptodus and that it was a caseasaur rather than a sphenacodontid. This was confirmed in 2016 by a cladistic analysis which recovered Callibrachion as a basal caseid. Callibrachion's sharp teeth and unenlarged ribcage indicate that this animal was likely faunivorous.
The Madygen Formation is a Late Triassic (Carnian) geologic formation and Lagerstätte in the Batken and Osh Regions of western Kyrgyzstan, with minor outcrops in neighboring Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The conglomerates, sandstones and mudstones of the 560 m (1,840 ft) thick formation were deposited in terrestrial lacustrine, alluvial, fluvial and deltaic environments.
The Corona Formation is a geologic formation of the Carnian Alps at the border of Austria and Italy. It preserves fossils dated to the Gzhelian stage of the Late Carboniferous period.
The Peltaspermales are an extinct order of seed plants, often considered "seed ferns". They span from the Late Carboniferous to the Early Jurassic. It includes at least one valid family, Peltaspermaceae, which spans from the Permian to Early Jurassic, which is typified by a group of plants with Lepidopteris leaves, Antevsia pollen-organs, and Peltaspermum ovulate organs, though the family now also includes other genera like Peltaspermopsis, Meyenopteris and Scytophyllum. Along with these, two informal groups of uncertain taxonomic affinities exist, each centered around a specific genus ; Supaia and Comia, known from the Early Permian of the Northern Hemisphere, especially of North America. Both the "Comioids" and the "Supaioids" are associated with the peltaspermacean ovulate organ Autunia. The Late Triassic-Middle Jurassic genus Pachydermophyllum may also have affinities to the peltasperms.
Streptognathodus is an extinct genus of conodonts from the Late Carboniferous to Early Permian.
This list of fossil arthropods described in 2011 is a list of new taxa of trilobites, fossil insects, crustaceans, arachnids and other fossil arthropods of every kind that have been described during the year 2011. The list only includes taxa at the level of genus or species.
The cohort Polyneoptera is one of the major groups of winged insects, comprising the Orthoptera and all other neopteran insects believed to be more closely related to Orthoptera than to any other insect orders. They were formerly grouped together with the Palaeoptera and Paraneoptera as the Hemimetabola or Exopterygota on the grounds that they have no metamorphosis, the wings gradually developing externally throughout the nymphal stages. Many members of the group have leathery forewings (tegmina) and hindwings with an enlarged anal field (vannus).
2018 in paleoentomology is a list of new fossil insect taxa that were described during the year 2018, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleoentomology that were scheduled to occur during the year.
2017 in paleoentomology is a list of new fossil insect taxa that were described during the year 2017, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleoentomology that were scheduled to occur during the year.
Permopsocida is an extinct order of insects known from the Early Permian to the Mid-Cretaceous. It is part of Paraneoptera, alongside bark lice, bugs and thrips. Within Paraneoptera it is considered to be closer to the clade containing bugs and thrips rather than bark lice, with an estimated divergence during the Late Carboniferous. The group was first named as a suborder by Robert John Tillyard in 1926, and was raised to a full order by Huang et al. in 2016. It is currently divided up into three families, Psocidiidae which is known from the Permian to Liassic. Permopsocidae which is only known from the Permian, and Archipsyllidae, which is known from the Late Triassic to mid-Cretaceous (Cenomanian). While most members of the group are known from compression fossils, several members of Archipsyllidae are 3 dimensionally preserved in Burmese amber, which has helped clarify the morphology and phylogenetic position of the group. The morphology of the mouthparts suggests that they were capable of suction feeding and chewing, with preserved angiosperm pollen grains in the gut of Psocorrhyncha suggesting that at least some members of the group were pollenivorous.
This paleoentomology list records new fossil insect taxa that are to be described during the year 2022, as well as notes other significant paleoentomology discoveries and events which occurred during that year.
Geinitziidae is an extinct family of polyneopteran insects, known from the Permian to Cretaceous. They are currently considered to be members "Grylloblattida" a poorly defined group of extinct insects thought to be related to modern ice crawlers (Grylloblattidae). Other authors place them in the extinct order Reculida. Unlike modern ice crawlers, which are wingless, they had large wings, bearing a superficial resemblance to cockroaches, and are thought to have been day-active above ground predators.
Paoliida is an extinct order of winged insects that lived in the late Paleozoic. Historically, both their systematic position and composition were controversial – for instance they had been considered as palaeodictyopterans, as basal Neoptera, or as stem-group of Pterygota – but recent studies have resolved them as the sister group of Dictyoptera.
