Overview of Fossil Beetles

摘要: Beetles have a well-preserved, abundant Quaternary fossil record in many regions of the world. Fossil beetle research has led to exciting breakthroughs our understanding pace and intensity climate change terrestrial landscapes. are most diverse group organisms on Earth, with more than one million species known science. A large proportion be quite sensitive environmental change, shift their distributions across continents order become established suitable environment (Elias, 1994). assemblages been recovered from wide variety sedimentary environments, especially anoxic water-lain sediments that concentrate remains layers organic detritus. Their easily extracted sediments, faunal frequently include 100 identified species. Paleoclimatic reconstructions based assemblage data demonstrated same rapid, large-scale changes temperatures seen oxygen isotope records Greenland. Beetle also provide highly detailed other aspects past including vegetation, substrates, water quality. arthropod making significant contributions field archaeology. New analytical methods being developed analyze both stable isotopes ancient DNA chitin specimens. The former will an independent paleotemperature proxy latter is shedding light Late Pleistocene phylogenetics beetles.