Introduction to thematic volume “Fossil arthropods in Late Cretaceous Vendean amber (northwestern France)”

There is growing knowledge of the insect and arachnid Cretaceous diversity worldwide, most notably as a result of the discovery, in the past twenty years, of numerous Konservat-Lagerstatten (highly fossiliferous deposits) that provide a plethora of fossil arthropods (Wang & Szwedo, 2014). Early Cretaceous (Berriasian–Aptian) insects are known primarily from imprints in rocks, while fossiliferous amber yielding arthropod inclusions range mostly from the Albian to the Campanian – the sole exception being Hauterivian-Barremian amber of Lebanon and Jordan.