At first glance, the newly-named fossil hangingfly Juracimbrophlebia ginkgofolia doesn’t look especially impressive. Found in the roughly 165 million year old beds of China’s Jiulongshan Formation, and described by paleontologist Yongjie Wang and colleagues today in PNAS, the insect looks quite similar to its thin-bodied, stilt-legged, long-winged living relatives. But when taken in context with the various other organisms found in the same beds, a subtle connection comes into focus. The ancient hangingfly, Wang and co-authors propose, was a mimic of Jurassic ginkgo trees.

Mimicry isn’t a new development among insects. The evolutionary connection between arthropods and the vegetation they resemble may go back over 300 million years, and, among modern forms, has adapted insects so intricately