Iberoraphidia

Iberoraphidia is an extinct genus of snakefly in the family Mesoraphidiidae. The genus is solely known from a Cretaceous, Lower Barremian, fossil found in Spain. Currently the genus is composed of a single species, Iberoraphidia dividua.[1][2]

Iberoraphidia
Temporal range: Lower Barremian Barremian
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Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Raphidioptera
Family: †Mesoraphidiidae
Genus: †Iberoraphidia
Species:
†I. dividua
Binomial name
†Iberoraphidia dividua
Jepson, Ansorge & Jarzembowski, 2011

History and classification

Iberoraphidia dividua is known only from one fossil, the part and counterpart holotype, specimen number GZG.RF.7563. which is housed in the Geo-Sciences center of the University of Göttingen in Germany. The specimen is preserved as a compression fossil in lithographic limestone, dating to the Lower Barremian age, which was recovered from outcrops of the La Pedrera de Rúbies Formation formed by deposition of carbonate mud in a brackish or freshwater lagoon. The outcrop is located in the Serra del Montsec region near the town of Santa Maria de Meia, province of Lleida.[1] Iberoraphidia was first studied by the paleoentomologists James E. Jepson and Edmund A. Jarzembowski from the United Kingdom and Jörg Ansorge from Germany. Their 2011 type description of the new genus and species was published in the entomology journal Palaeontology. The genus name Iberoraphidia was coined by the researchers as a combination of the snakefly genus Raphidia and "Ibero" which is in reference to the Iberian Peninsula where the type locality is.[1] The specific epithet dividua is taken from the word "divided" and is a reference to the unique divided structure of the pterostigma.[1]

Description

The holotype is composed of a single fully complete adult forewing of 12.5 millimetres (0.49 in) in length with distinct macrotrichiae on both the C vein and parts of the R vein. The overall vein structure displayed by the specimen is most similar to that seen in the family Mesoraphidiidae, being distinctly simpler in structure then venation seen in the family Baissopteridae.[1] Several features of the wing are used to distinguish Iberoraphidia from other Mesoraphidiidae genera. The wing possesses a fork of the MA and MP veins that is closer to the wing base then seen in most other genera, with only the genus Ororaphidia having a similar shift. Iberoraphidia can be further separated from both Ororaphidia and other Mesoraphidiids by the distinctly divided pterostigma. In total the pterostigma is over 1.7 millimetres (0.067 in) long, however the basal and apical sections are separated by a 1.7 centimetres (0.67 in) long middle cell.[1]

gollark: For purposes only, you understand.
gollark: There are lots of *imaginable* and *claimed* gods, so I'm saying "gods".
gollark: So basically, the "god must exist because the universe is complex" thing ignores the fact that it... isn't really... and that gods would be pretty complex too, and does not answer any questions usefully because it just pushes off the question of why things exist to why *god* exists.
gollark: To randomly interject very late, I don't agree with your reasoning here. As far as physicists can tell, while pretty complex and hard for humans to understand, relative to some other things the universe runs on simple rules - you can probably describe the way it works in maybe a book's worth of material assuming quite a lot of mathematical background. Which is less than you might need for, say, a particularly complex modern computer system. You know what else is quite complex? Gods. They are generally portrayed as acting fairly similarly to humans (humans like modelling other things as basically-humans and writing human-centric stories), and even apart from that are clearly meant to be intelligent agents of some kind. Both of those are complicated - the human genome is something like 6GB, a good deal of which probably codes for brain things. As for other intelligent things, despite having tons of data once trained, modern machine learning things are admittedly not very complex to *describe*, but nobody knows what an architecture for general intelligence would look like.
gollark: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/348702212110680064/896356765267025940/FB_IMG_1633757163544.jpg

References
  1. Jepson, J.E.; Ansorge, J.; Jarzembowski, E.A. (2011). "New snakeflies (Insecta: Raphidioptera) from the Lower Cretaceous of the UK, Spain and Brazil". Palaeontology. 54 (2): 385–395. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2011.01038.x.
  2. Pérez-de la Fuente, R.; Peñalver, E.; Delclòs, X.; Engel, M.S. (2012). "Snakefly diversity in Early Cretaceous amber from Spain (Neuropterida, Raphidioptera)". ZooKeys. 204: 1–40. doi:10.3897/zookeys.204.2740. PMC 3391719. PMID 22787417.
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