Chthonius marusiki sp. nov. – the first pseudoscorpion of the family Chthoniidae Daday, 1889 (Arachnida, Pseudoscorpiones) from the late Eocene Rovno amber

ABSTRACT

A new species of chthonioid pseudoscorpion is described from Eocene Rovno amber (Ukraine), including a detailed diagnosis and illustrations: Chthonius marusiki sp. nov. (Arachnida, Pseudoscorpiones) is the first valid species of the family Chthoniidae from Rovno amber. Diagnostic, biogeographic, paleohabitat and ecological features of this new species are presented and discussed, and are compared to the related extinct and extant species of this genus.

KEYWORDS:

• Taxonomy
• Cenozoic
• new species
• fossil pseudoscorpions
• arachnid

Acknowledgments

The authors are much grateful to the anonymous reviewers for constructive suggestions and comments that significantly improved an earlier version of the manuscript; Anatoly P. Vlaskin (Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, Kiev, Ukraine) for the initial cutting and polishing of the piece; Joshua M. Jenkins Shaw (Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark) for improving the English. The research of Ilya S. Turbanov was conducted within the framework of State Assignment No. 121051100109-1, while the research of Vasiliy B. Kolesnikov was funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation within the framework of the Federal Scientific and Technical Program for the Development of Genetic Technologies for 2019–2027 (agreement No. 075-15-2021-1345, unique identifier RF—193021X0012). The work of Dmitry Vorontsov was conducted under the IDB RAS Government basic research program № 0088-2021-0019. Evgeny E. Perkovsky is supported by a grant from the Scholars at Risk Ukraine (SARU) program jointly funded by the Villum Foundation, Carlsberg Foundation and Novo Nordisk Foundation.

Disclosure statement

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