Cf Notocupes laetus
Insects Order Coleoptera, Family Cupedidae
Geological Time: Early Cretaceous
Size (25.4 mm = 1 inch): Insect fossil is 20 mm long, Matrix: 105 mm by 40 mm
Fossil Site: Yixian Formation, Huangbangi Valley, Beipiao, Liaoning Province of China
Code: TF284
Price: Sold
 Description:
The Class Insecta is well represented in Liaoning and Hebei Provinces
of China, with over 500 species referable to over 100 families
based upon over 10,000 specimens. This fantastic diversity and
exquisite detail is unprecedented throughout the world. This example
is a negative impression of a beetle with distinctively-ornamented
elytra of the family Clupedidae. This distinctive pattern of sculpted
pits on the elytra has allowed tracking of these most obvious beetles
from their “beetleoid” ancestry in the Permian. True
beetles of this morphology are known from the Late Triassic. They
radiated throughout the Jurassic, and then declined during the
Cretaceous, with some 9 genera and 30 species persisting to the
Recent. While many fossil consist of at most a single elytron,
we have here a complete example of this most distinctive of beetles. |
