“…We first establish that we agree with a central concern of Dubovikoff & Zharkov [1] regarding the provenance of the army ant specimen we reported [2]. Indeed, the collection the authors note, housed within the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St Petersburg), is one of two collections we were made aware of shortly after the publication of our article.…”
supporting
confidence: 81%
“…Figure 1Z-stack data from the CT scan of PALE-8463. (Left) Cross-section of the head at the anterior margin; segmented elements from the three-dimensional reconstruction of Dubovikoff & Zharkov [1] in green. (Right) Squares infilled with grey-scale values demonstrating examples of nearby pixels with identical or near identical grey values that were both included and excluded in the manual segmentation process.…”
Section: Ct-scan Segmentation Includes a Trade-off Between Precision ...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…There is no doubt that the specimen is not Baltic amber; however, there are three elements that Dubovikoff & Zharkov raise that we feel are inaccurate and require a response in the literature [1]. These issues relate to the identification of copal specimens, CT-scan segmentation and repeatability, and the nature of taxonomic assignment.…”
“…We first establish that we agree with a central concern of Dubovikoff & Zharkov [1] regarding the provenance of the army ant specimen we reported [2]. Indeed, the collection the authors note, housed within the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St Petersburg), is one of two collections we were made aware of shortly after the publication of our article.…”
supporting
confidence: 81%
“…Figure 1Z-stack data from the CT scan of PALE-8463. (Left) Cross-section of the head at the anterior margin; segmented elements from the three-dimensional reconstruction of Dubovikoff & Zharkov [1] in green. (Right) Squares infilled with grey-scale values demonstrating examples of nearby pixels with identical or near identical grey values that were both included and excluded in the manual segmentation process.…”
Section: Ct-scan Segmentation Includes a Trade-off Between Precision ...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…There is no doubt that the specimen is not Baltic amber; however, there are three elements that Dubovikoff & Zharkov raise that we feel are inaccurate and require a response in the literature [1]. These issues relate to the identification of copal specimens, CT-scan segmentation and repeatability, and the nature of taxonomic assignment.…”
As the only direct records of the history of evolution, it is critical to determine the geological source of biota-bearing fossils. Through the application of synchrotron-radiation micro-computed tomography (SR-µ-CT), Fourier-transformed infrared-spectroscopy (FT-IR), visual evaluation of ultraviolet fluorescence (UV-VS), radiocarbon dating (14C quantification), and historical sleuthing, we were able to identify and sort 161 (83 Baltic amber, 71 Copal and 7 Kauri gum pieces) individually numbered and largely mislabeled pieces of East African Defaunation resin (~145 years old) and copal (~390 years old), as well as Baltic amber (~35 million years old) from the Phyletisches Museum collection. Based on this collection, we define two new species: ‡Amphientomum knorrei Weingardt, Bock & Boudinot, sp. nov. (Psocodea: Amphientomidae, copal) and †Baltistena nigrispinata Batelka, Tröger & Bock, sp. nov. (Coleoptera: Mordellidae, Baltic amber). For selected taxa, we provide systematic reviews of the fossil record, including: Amphientomidae, for which we provide a key to all species of Amphientomum, extant and extinct, and recognize the junior synonymy of Am. ectostriolatum Li, 2002 (an unjustified emendation) under Am. ectostriolate Li, 1999 (syn. nov.); the fossil ant genus †Yantaromyrmex and the clades Dorylinae, Plagiolepidini, Camponotus, Crematogaster, and Pheidole (Formicidae); the Nevrorthidae (Neuroptera); and Doliopygus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Platypodinae). We synonymize Palaeoseopsis Enderlein, 1925 with Amphientomum Pictet, 1854, syn. nov. and transfer one species from Amphientomum, forming Lithoseopsis indentatum (Turner, 1975), comb. nov. To prevent the uncritical usage of unidentifiable fossils attributed to Camponotus for macroevolutionary analysis, we transfer 29 species to the form genus †Camponotites Steinbach, 1967, which we consider to be most useful as incertae sedis in the Formicinae. We treat †Ctt. ullrichi (Bachmayer, 1960), comb. nov. as unidentifiable hence invalid stat. nov. We also transfer †Ca. mengei Mayr, 1868 and its junior synonym †Ca. igneus Mayr, 1868 to a new genus, †Eocamponotus Boudinot, gen. nov., which is incertae sedis in the Camponotini. Concluding our revision of Camponotus fossils, we transfer †Ca. palaeopterus (Zhang, 1989) to Liometopum (Dolichoderinae), resulting in †L. palaeopterumcomb. nov. and the junior synonymy of †Shanwangella Zhang, 1989, syn. nov. under Liometopum Mayr, 1861. Because the type specimens of the genera †Palaeosminthurus Pierce & Gibron, 1962, stat. rev. and †Pseudocamponotus Carpenter, 1930 are unidentifiable due to poor preservation, we consider these taxa unidentifiable hence invalid stat. nov. To avoid unsupported use of the available fossils names attributed to Crematogaster for divergence dating calibration points, we transfer three species to a new collective taxon that is incertae sedis in Myrmicinae, †Incertogaster Boudinot, gen. nov., forming †In. aurora (LaPolla & Greenwalt, 2015), †In. praecursor (Emery, 1891), comb. nov., and †In. primitiva (Radchenko & Dlussky, 2019), comb. nov. Finally, we transfer †Ph. cordata (Holl, 1829) back to Pheidole, and designate a neotype from our copal collection based on all available evidence. All new species plus the neotype of ‡Ph. cordata are depicted with 3D cybertypes from our µ-CT scan data. We introduce the convention of a double dagger symbol (‡) to indicate fossils in copal or Defaunation resin, as these may yet be extant. To further contextualize our results, we provide a discussion of amber history and classification, as well as the Kleinkuhren locality, to which multiple specimens were attributed. We conclude with conspecti on key biological problems and increasing potential of µ-CT for phylogenetic paleontology.
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