Morphological and organic spectroscopic studies of a 44-million-year-old leaf beetle (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) in amber with endogenous remains of chitin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study details the quality of preservation of amber deposits in the Eocene. Through Baltic amber crack-out studies using Synchrotron Micro-Computed Tomography and Scanning Electron Microscopy it was found that the cuticle of a specimen of leaf beetle (Crepidodera tertiotertiaria (Alticini: Galerucinae: Chrysomelidae)) is exceptionally well preserved. Spectroscopic analysis using Synchrotron Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy suggests presence of degraded [Formula: see text]-chitin in multiple areas of the cuticle, and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy supports the presence of organic preservation. This remarkable preservation is likely the result of several factors such as the favourable antimicrobial and physical shielding properties of Baltic amber as compared to other depositional media, coupled to rapid dehydration of the beetle early in its taphonomic process. We provide evidence that crack-out studies of amber inclusions, although inherently destructive of fossils, are an underutilised method for probing exceptional preservation in deep time.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".