1. Introduction

Günter Bechly (born October 16 1963 in Sindelfingen) is a German paleontologist and entomologist, who works with fossil insects (especially dragonflies). From 1999 to 2016 he was scientific curator for amber and fossil insects at the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart. ^[1]

2. Life

Bechly studied from 1987 to 1991 biology at the University of Hohenheim and from 1991 to 1994 zoology, parasitology and paleontology at the University of Tübingen. He graduated in 1994 from Gerhard Mickoleit on the morphology of dragonfly wings and was awarded summa cum laude in 1999 by Wolf-Ernst Reif with summa cum laude on [ [Tribal history]] of dragonflies. After almost a year of academic traineeship, he began his work as a curator at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart in 1999, which he ended in December 2016. Research stays led him, among other things. to the Museum of Comparative Zoology and numerous other natural history museums around the world. ^[2]

3. Work

Bechly's work focuses on fossil dragonflies from all geological ages, the evolution and tribal history of dragonflies and other early flying insects, and fossil insects from the Upper Jurassic of Germany (Solnhofen limestone e) and the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil (Crato-Plattenkalke) as well as various amber inclusions n. Bechly has described 167 new species, ^[3] including Lebanoraphidia nana and the associated genus. ^[4] The description of the new fossil insect order of the Chimera winged in 2011, which also provided new information on the evolution of the insect wing. ^[2]

In 2016 he and colleagues introduced a new, now extinct, insect order, Permopsocida. ^[5] At the end of 2013, Bechly and André Nel found a specimen ( Psocorrhyncha burmitica ) from Burma (medium chalk, around 100 million years old) in the amber collection of the Natural History Museum in Stuttgart and a Nel employee at about the same time another specimen of the order in a Chinese one Amber collection. They belonged to the early pollinators in the Cretaceous period, fed on pollen, have the status of a missing link and are related to today's Schnabelkerfe n and Fransenflügler n. The order was relatively poor in species, existed for at least 185 million years and died out at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago. So far, older fossils are only known from a much earlier time than the new finds. The finds also provided evidence of the evolution of the snout's proboscis from mouthparts originally used for chewing.

As project manager, Bechly organized the special exhibition "The River of Life - 150 Years of Evolution" in Rosenstein Castle in 2009, which was one of the largest events for the Darwin year 2009 in Germany with more than 90,000 visitors. The concept for this exhibition was one of the winners of the ideas competition "Evolution today" of the VolkswagenStiftung in 2008. ^[6]

4. Intelligent Design Creationism

In 2016 Bechly took up the cause of intelligent design creationism, and joined the American Discovery Institute which promotes pseudoscience in political campaigns. An English language Wikipedia article which had previously been created about Bechly was reviewed and, after full discussion, deleted in October 2017 for lacking sources to establish notability. Omer Benjakob, senior news editor at Haaretz, cited the discussion as an example of the way "the crowdsourced online encyclopedia tries, and many times succeeds, in fending off attempts to politicize scientific content, even in the face of aggressive attempts by religious conservatives".^[7]