A new, extraordinary ‘damselfly-like’ Odonatoptera from the Pennsylvanian of the Avion locality in Pas-de-Calais, France (Insecta: ‘Exopterygota’)

Abstract

Nel, A., Roques, P., Prokop, J., & Garrouste, R., 11 September 2018. A new, extraordinary ‘damselfly-like’ Odonatoptera from the Pennsylvanian of the Avion locality in Pas-de-Calais, France (Insecta: ‘Exopterygota’). Alcheringa 43, 241–245. ISSN 0311-5518.

Enigmaptera magnifica gen. et sp. nov., type genus and species of the new odonatopteran family Enigmapteridae, is described from the Moscovian of Avion (northern France). It is the sister group of the major clade Neodonatoptera, placed together in the new clade Paneodonatoptera. Its wing venation has characters never found in other Odonatoptera. It is a further case of convergent wing petiolation in this superorder. Enigmaptera magnifica, like the protozygopteran Jacquesoudardia magnifica from the same outcrop, probably lived like the extant damselflies along the shores of lakes and rivers, hunting the small insects found in the same deposits. These discoveries show that very small insects were significant elements of the entomofaunal diversity and trophic chains of the Late Carboniferous ecosystems.

Romain Garrouste [[email protected]] Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, EPHE, 57 rue Cuvier, CP 50, 75005 Paris, France; Patrick Roques [[email protected]] Allée des Myosotis, Neuilly sur Marne, F-93330, France.; Jakub Prokop [[email protected]] Charles University, Faculty of Science, Department of Zoology, Viničná 7, CZ-128 44, Praha 2, Czech Republic.

Key words:

• Odonatoptera
• fam.
• gen. et sp. nov.
• phylogeny
• Moscovian
• palaeoecology

Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous referees and Stephen McLoughlin for their useful comments on the first version of the paper. We also thank Mr Stéphane Carlier, Eiffage Route Nord Est, for his kind authorization to collect fossil insects in the terril of Avion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work of JP was supported by the research project of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (No. 18-03118S).