The first record of osoriine rove beetles (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) in Eocene Baltic amber

ABSTRACT

There are no formal fossil records of Osoriinae known from the pre-Quaternary Europe. Here, a new osoriine rove beetle species, Thoracophorus balticus sp. nov., is described and illustrated based on an exquisitely well-preserved adult in Eocene Baltic amber. The new species is placed in the extant genus Thoracophorus (Thoracophorini: Thoracophorina), a nearly worldwide genus, albeit with only a single modern species in Europe. Our discovery is significant in consideration of the palaeofauna of Staphylinidae in the Eocene European forests that produced Baltic amber, as well as the palaeozoogeography of the genus.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Palaeontology
• taxonomy
• Thoracophorini
• Thoracophorus
• new species
• Europe

Acknowledgments

The first author (SY) is grateful to members of FMNH and the Hokkaido University Museum, Sapporo for general assistance. The third author (EP) thanks Dmitry А. Dubovikoff (Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg) and Łukash Depa (Silesian University, Katowice) for discussion. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by the JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan) Overseas Research Fellowship [number 29-212] and Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows [number JP20J00159].