Günter Bechly


Günter Bechly is a German fossil insect paleontologist and entomologist.

Life

Bechly was born 1963 and grew up in Böblingen, Germany. He is married and has two sons.
Bechly worked on amber and fossil insects. He studied biology at the University of Hohenheim and zoology, parasitology and paleontology at the University of Tübingen. He completed his thesis on fossil history and the phylogeny of odonata. He was a curator at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart.

Work

Bechly's works on evolution, phylogeny, the fossil history of odonates, basal pterygotes, fossil insects from the upper Jurassic period at the solnhofen limestone in Germany and the crato formationes of the lower cretaceous in Brazil. In 2011, his theorized about the fossil insect order coxoplectoptera and its insect wings evolution.
After prehistoric predatory cockroaches were found in amber in Myanmar, Bechly said in an article in Geologica Carpathica regarding the cockroaches found, that they had "unique adaptations such as strongly elongated extremities and freely movable head on a long neck suggest that these animals were pursuit predators."

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".