Found in a piece of mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar, the wonderfully-preserved male of Cretophengodes azari has a light organ on the abdomen which presumably served a defensive function. An artistic reconstruction of Cretophengodes azari; the larviform female in the background is reconstructed based on extant Phengodidae and Rhagophthalmidae beetles. …
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An international team of paleobiologists has uncovered the fossil of a 105-million-year-old gymnosperm pollinating beetle, named Darwinylus marcosi. The fossil, encased in a piece of amber from Spain, is shedding new light on the various ways insects pollinated plants during the mid-Mesozoic era. Reconstruction of Darwinylus marcosi on a gymnosperm …
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A new species of ground beetle has been identified by Cornell University Professor James Liebherr. Holotype specimen of Bryanites graeffii. Image credit: J.K. Liebherr. “Bryanites graeffii is described from Samoa based on a single male specimen collected between 1862-1870 that was recently discovered in the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris,” …
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Fossilized forewings (elytra) from two individuals, discovered at the Oliver Bluffs on the Beardmore Glacier, revealed the first ground beetle species known from Antarctica. Research describing the new species is published online in the journal ZooKeys. Fossils of the left and right elytra of the Ball’s Antarctic tundra beetle (Antarctotrechus …
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