Earliest fossil record of Tachyporini rove beetles in mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber from northern Myanmar (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Tachyporinae)

Abstract

The rove beetle subfamily Tachyporinae has recently been revised. Fossil records of the newly reclassified tribe Tachyporini are relatively rare, with only one definitive Mesozoic fossil from Upper Cretaceous (Turonian) New Jersey amber in the United States. Here, a new Tachyporini species, Tachyporus burmiticus sp. nov., is described from mid-Cretaceous (Albian–Cenomanian) Kachin amber of northern Myanmar, and tentatively placed in the extant genus TachyporusGravenhorst, 1802 of the subtribe Tachyporina. The discovery stands as the earliest fossil record of Tachyporini, highlighting potentially greater phylogenetic paleodiversity of tachyporine rove beetles in Kachin amber. Furthermore, this finding sheds new light on the paleodiversity and wider distribution of the tribe and subtribe during the Cretaceous.