A new throscid from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber (Coleoptera: Elateroidea: Throscidae)

ABSTRACT

Throscidae is a small family belonging to the polyphagan superfamily Elateroidea. Fossil throscids with a large morphological variety have been discovered from Cretaceous and Cenozoic amber deposits. However, only one of them has been reported from the fossil-rich Cretaceous Burmese amber so far. Here we describe and figure the second throscid beetle in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber (ca. 99 Ma), Trixagosoma guangyuani gen. et sp. nov. The new fossil species has Trixagus-like short mesotarsal grooves and Potergosoma-like prosternum with nonparallel carinae. Our phylogenetic analysis indicates that it represents an early branching lineage of Throscidae. Its short mesotarsal grooves on metaventrite might represent an early evolutionary stage of this structure.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:2793C1A1-EE55-4F96-B3E8-E98D289EB261

KEYWORDS:

• Elateroidea
• Throscidae
• Trixagosoma 
• Mesozoic
• Burmese amber

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Yan-Zhe Fu for help in confocal photography, Dr. Martin R. Smith for help in phylogenetic reconstruction, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Material

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [XDB18000000, XDB26000000], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [41688103], and the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research [2019QZKK0706].