[VadeRetro]

In the case we are discussing the "feather" evidence is placed ~22 million years prior to the dating of the fossil bearing that evidence.

A cladogram is not a chart of fossil-record appearance dates.

[VadeRetro]

Attested fossil record in black, "ghost ranges" (unattested but phylogenetically inferred periods of existence) in thin gray.

Relationships and durations of Hymenopteran Families (modified from Rasnitsyn (1988)).

Your new poster-boy for "fossil gaps" is something called Xiphydriidae. It "needs" (according to Rasnitsyn's cladogram) to have been around since the mid-Jurassic but has only popped up recently so far as anyone has noticed in the fossil record. You needn't thank me.

[AndrewC]

A cladogram is not a chart of fossil-record appearance dates.

Yeah right. The Sinosauropteryx is placed ~22 million years from its dating.