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External and internal morphological characters of extant and fossil organisms are crucial to establishing their systematic position, ecological role and evolutionary trends. (…) We found well-preserved three-dimensional anatomy in mineralized arthropods from Paleogene fissure fillings and demonstrate the value of these fossils by utilizing digitally reconstructed anatomical structure of a hister beetle. The new anatomical data facilitate a refinement of the species diagnosis and allowed us to reject a previous hypothesis of close phylogenetic relationship to an extant congeneric species. Our findings suggest that mineralized fossils, even those of macroscopically poor preservation, constitute a rich but yet largely unexploited source of anatomical data for fossil arthropods.
3D reconstruction followed the protocol described by Ruthensteiner and Heß (2008) and van de Kamp et al., (2014); using Amira (versions 5.5, 6) and Avizo (version 8.1) for segmentation of the tomographic volumes.
For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.