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A research team led by Simon Fraser University reveals how fossil dragonfly relatives have been misidentified due to their bizarre similarity.
For over 150 years, researchers have been wrongly classifying a group of fossil insects to be damselflies, who are the familiar cousins of dragonflies that bat around wetlands feeding on mosquitoes.
While they are strikingly identical, these fossils have strangely shaped heads, which scientists have always assigned to distortion arising as a result of the fossilization process.
(Photo : Pixabay)
Distinctive Shape of the Insect
Nevertheless, a team of scientists from Simon Fraser University (SFU), led by paleontologist Bruce Archibald has found out they are not damselflies at all, but symbolize a major new group of insects that is intimately similar to them.