The earliest fossil record of Belidae and its implications for the early evolution of Curculionoidea (Coleoptera)

Abstract

Here we report the earliest known fossil belid, Sinoeuglypheus daohugouensis gen. et sp. nov., from the latest Middle Jurassic Jiulongshan Formation of north-eastern China. Extant belids are specialist herbivores feeding on gymnosperms or angiosperms, but it is likely that this new belid fed on coexisting conifers or other gymnosperms. Extant members of Belidae are predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, this new find in the north-eastern China deposit is significant for understanding the early stages of the radiation of this group during the mid-Mesozoic, and the early evolution of Curculionoidea.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:2020E35D-E918-4C84-993C-20B8E4DBB671

Keywords:

• Coleoptera
• weevil
• Middle Jurassic
• Jiulongshan Formation
• Daohugou
• China

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the following grants awarded to YLY: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31702039) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 18lgpy55); HP: the Basic Work Special Project of the National Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2013FY111500) and key project of Science-technology basic condition platform from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (Grant No. 2005DKA21402); and to DR: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 31730087 and 41688103), the programme for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT-17R75) and Project of High-level Teachers in Beijing Municipal Universities (No. IDHT20180518). Partial funding was provided by NSF DEB-1110590 (to M. S. Engel, P. Cartwright and S. R. Davis) through the University of Kansas, and continued support was provided to SRD by the Gerstner and Kalbfleisch postdoctoral fellowships through the American Museum of Natural History and Richard Gilder Graduate School during the completion of this study. Much appreciation is given to two anonymous reviewers who offered constructive challenges to the interpretation of the fossil.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2019.1588401

Associate Editor: Vladimir Blagoderov