Cretaceous Mantids

[Morbo]

Here's an interesting paper on prehistoric mantids (with some diagrams, illustrations, fossils, and a whole lot of scientific jargon):

http://www.terratrea...us Mantises.pdf

 

[MandellaMandy123]

Wow - those are some really interesting mantids! I'd think I'd like to keep one as a pet. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Crazy4mantis]

it looks like it has 8 legs...

 

[geohaber]

Thanks for posting, a lot of the jargon definitely needs translating. The most interesting thing I found is that they were very small and similar in appearance, compared to the mantises of today which can be quite large and there are a large number of variations in body style.

 

[Reptiliatus]

Simply incredible. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Rick]

Good read. Thanks.

Thanks for posting, a lot of the jargon definitely needs translating. The most interesting thing I found is that they were very small and similar in appearance, compared to the mantises of today which can be quite large and there are a large number of variations in body style.

Not sure what you mean by translated, it was all in English. If you don't know the meaning of a word just google it. The conclusions section summed it up nicely.

 

[gripen]

Good read. Thanks.

Not sure what you mean by translated, it was all in English. If you don't know the meaning of a word just google it. The conclusions section summed it up nicely.

Rick he needs it translated to Canadian eh?

 

[geohaber]

Rick he needs it translated to Canadian eh?

Funny) It's you guys who don't know proper English ))))

 

[geohaber]

Good read. Thanks.

Not sure what you mean by translated, it was all in English. If you don't know the meaning of a word just google it. The conclusions section summed it up nicely.

It is not an easy read with all the scientific jargon, who wants to Google every half dozen words? )

 

[Rick]

It is not an easy read with all the scientific jargon, who wants to Google every half dozen words? )

If you really wanted to know what was being said you would. Learning those words is helpful, many of them will appear in scientific papers like this.

 

[geohaber]

If you really wanted to know what was being said you would. Learning those words is helpful, many of them will appear in scientific papers like this.

To tell the truth I understand some of the jargon, but I'm not interested learning more of it or reading these kind of scientific papers. What drew me were the images, although interesting, unfortunately are not good enough for me to do anything with.

 

[AFK]

Post some sentences that you want help understanding and I'll try my best to translate them.

Also, does anyone know if there are any prehistoric mantids with longer pronotums, e.g. Tenodera and Hierodula?

 

[Christian]

Hi.

There are not many mantid species known from fossils, but the available data suggest that modern mantids did not appear in numbers before the Tertiary, although according to molecular data most groups were already present in the Cretaceous. This is a bit of a riddle. Since the best fossils are amber mantids, one explanation is that only small species living on bark were small enough and lived in the "right" habitat to be encompassed by resin. This also explains why this type of "primitive" mantid is still abundant in the Eocene amber fossils, although "higher" mantids were already common. And, indeed, the only higher mantids known so far from amber are small nymphs. Some mantodean type fossils are known as compressions in stone, but these are mostly wings and are the object of some dispute among scentists.

Greets,

C.