Cretaceous Aquatic Beetle Fossil in Swimming Pose

This is a fossil of a burrowing water beetle with its legs extended, frozen in its last swim for the past 125 million years. The deposits from which it comes are home to many exquisitely preserved insect fossils, some exceptionally three dimensional in preservation. Such delicate items as the paper-thin wing bones of Pterosaurs have been found, testimony to the type of preservation that can be found. This preservation is evident here as well.