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482 Accepted by D.-Y. Huang: 10 Oct. 2019; published: 31 Oct. 2019
Palaeoentomology 002 (5): 482–490
https://www.mapress.com/j/pe/
Copyright © 2019 Magnolia Press Article PALAEOENTOMOLOGY
ISSN 2624-2826 (print edition)
ISSN 2624-2834 (online edition) PE
Abstract
A new Cretaceous fossil beetle Mysteriomorphus pelevini
gen. et sp. nov. is described from Burmese amber and a
new family Mysteriomorphidae fam. nov. is proposed
to accommodate this new taxon. The new monogeneric
family is characterised by a combination of characters
present in different lineages of Elateroidea and Byrrhoidea
(Ptilodactylidae) and is therefore placed as incertae sedis in
the series Elateriformia.
Keywords: Polyphaga, burmite, new taxa, palaeontology,
Mesozoic, fossil resin
Introduction
Beetles appear in the Early Permian, Artinskian, 283.5–
290.1 Ma (Kukalová-Peck & Beutel, 2012), and the
modern taxonomical diversity of this most species-
rich metazoan order is the result of its approximately
290-million-year-long evolutionary history. Crown
Coleoptera originated in the earliest Permian or even
earlier, in the Carboniferous (Misof et al., 2014), the
divergence between the beetle series occurred mainly
during the Triassic, with most superfamilies appearing
during the Jurassic, and almost 64% of modern families
appearing in the Cretaceous (Zhang et al., 2018). As such,
the Cretaceous was an important period in shaping the
extreme diversity of beetles.
Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar (burmite)
contains a rich assemblage of different groups of beetles
and is of the earliest Cenomanian in age (98.79 ± 0.62 Ma
years old) based upon the isotopic U-Pb dating of zircons
in the matrix surrounding the amber (Shi et al., 2012).
Recently, a Late Albian—Early Cenomanian age of this
fossil Lagerstätte has been mentioned based upon the
inclusion of a juvenile ammonite belonging to subgenus
that first appeared in the Upper Albian and ranged through
the Cenomanian (Yu et al., 2019).
Hundreds of papers dealing with different animal
inclusions from burmite have been published in the last
decade. The taxonomic checklist of Burmese amber
organisms (Ross, 2019) includes 206 described beetle
species, but new discoveries since that time have been
published and many other beetles await description. A
number of Mesozoic beetles from the West Burma Block
of a Gondwanan origin (Poinar, 2018) can be assigned to
Recent genera (e.g. Clarke & Chatzimanolis, 2009; Liu
et al., 2015; Cai et al., 2016, 2017; Háva & Damgaard,
2017; Deng et al., 2017; Ellenberger & Fanti 2019; Vitali
& Ellenberger 2019), many taxa represent new genera or
tribes in different extant families (e.g. Legalov & Poinar,
2014; Caterino et al., 2015; Kazantsev, 2015; Poinar et
al., 2016; Jałoszyński et al., 2017; Yamamoto et al., 2017;
Hsiao et al., 2018; Batelka et al., 2018; Fanti et al., 2018;
Legalov, 2018; Tomaszewska et al., 2018), several ones
are assigned to new subfamilies (e.g. Poinar et al., 2017;
Li et al., 2019), but several taxa cannot be unambiguously
placed within any modern family. Two beetle families,
Apotomouridae and Passalopalpidae, are known only
from Burmese amber fossils at present (Boucher et al.,
2016; Bao et al., 2018), but the number of family-level
lineages in Burmese amber that have gone extinct since the
Cretaceous seems to be higher and remains undescribed.
A new genus Mysteriomorphus gen. nov. and
species, M. pelevini sp. nov. are described and figured in
the present paper. These burmite beetles probably belong
to the stem lineage of the series Elateriformia Crowson
1960, showing a combination of characters found in the
superfamilies Elateroidea and Byrrhoidea, as well as
a unique combination of characters, and therefore it is
tentatively described as new family Mysteriomorphidae
fam. nov. and placed as incertae sedis in the series
Elateriformia without a more detailed attribution.
https://doi.org/10.11646/palaeoentomology.2.5.12
http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:E9DA7F15-B93E-40EA-9F9B-93A415169868
A new beetle family, Mysteriomorphidae fam. nov. (Coleoptera: Elateriformia
incertae sedis), from mid-Cretaceous amber of northern Myanmar
VITALII I. ALEKSEEV1, 2* & SIEGHARD ELLENBERGER3
1Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nahimovskiy prospekt 36, 117997 Moscow, Russia.
2Kaliningrad Regional Amber Museum, Marshal Vasilevskii square 1, Kaliningrad, 236016, Russia.
3Bodelschwinghstraße 13, D-34119 Kassel, Germany.
*Corresponding author. Email: alekseew0802@yahoo.com
ALEKSEEV & ELLENBERGER
488 • Palaeoentomology 002 (5) © 2019 Magnolia Press
grooved to receive tibiae. The tibia with one acute and
slender apical spur; tibial spur almost indistinct between
quite long apical setae. Tarsi pentamerous, proportional
lengths of metatarsomeres: 1.2: 0.6: 0.5: 0.6: 0.7;
tarsomere 4 deeply bilobed; flashy pads on tarsomeres
absent. Claws falcate, acute, long and symmetrical.
Abdomen. With five ventrites of almost equal lengths.
Fifth ventrite simple, entire, without emargination
apically.
Discussion
Mysteriomorphidae fam. nov. possesses a mosaic of
characters of two elateriform superfamilies, Elateroidea
and Byrrhoidea, and it is hard to decide to which of these it
is closer. The artificial classification of the new family (1)
including into diverse Ptilodactylidae as a non-specialized
primitive member or (2) including into one of the families
within Elateroidea as an aberrant form with support of
two to three characters is possible but is not considered
to be the best solution for forming of any well-balanced
system. Therefore, the new family is placed in the series
Elateriformia. It is hoped, that the discovery of additional
specimens or the application of ‘virtual palaeontology’
methods (3-D digital visualizations) additional to our
traditional approach may shed light on the adequate
phylogenetic position of Mysteriomorphidae fam. nov.
Further investigations using X-ray micro-computed
tomography (micro-CT) could help to study internal
features in better preserved specimens and may add data
important for understanding the systematic placement of
the taxon. Several “intermediate” or related fossil and
recent taxa can be found in future and shed some light on
the position of this particular fossil. At the moment, we
emphasize the phylogenetic position of Mysteriomorphus
gen. nov. as “an early-branching member of the series
Elateriformia” and the probable independence of this
Cretaceous extinct beetle lineage in the familial rank
of the newly proposed taxon. The verification of the
provided hypothesis and resolving of systematical
position of Mysteriomorphidae fam. nov. is possible by
conducting of comprehensive phylogenetic analysis using
an morphological matrix of extant Elateriformia.
Acknowledgements
Dr. Adam S. Ślipiński, Dr. John F. Lawrence, and
Dr. Hermes E. Escalona (all from CSIRO, Canberra,
Australia), Dr. Robin Kundrata and Dr. Ladislav Bocák
(both Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic),
Fabrizio Fanti (Piazze, Italy), Dr. Manfred A. Jäch
(Vienna Natural History Museum, Wien, Austria), and
Dr. Sergey V. Kazantsev (Insect Centre, Moscow, Russia)
are cordially thanked for their helpful opinions about the
possible placement of the enigmatic beetles described
here. We thank Dr. Chenyang Cai (Nanjing Institute
of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of
Sciences) and one anonymous reviewer for their valuable
suggestions that sufficiently improved the manuscript.
The study of V.I.A. was done with the support of the state
assignment of IO RAS (Theme No.0149–2019–0013).
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