Last week, Frank Wieland visited Gavin Svenson at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Throughout the week they worked on the Smithsonian Mantodea collection, getting an overview and looking for hidden treasures. One focus lay on the morphology of flower mantises for the ongoing revision of that group.

Wieland and Svenson in the CMNH insect collection.

The CMNH insect collection.

Mantises may look mean but the giant Devonian fish Dunkleosteus, of which many specimens have been found in Ohio, certainly looked meaner…