Late Pleistocene beetle records from Japan

Abstract

The Late Pleistocene beetle records from Japan are reviewed. Japanese Quaternary Entomologists have thus far recorded 118 species of beetles from 19 sites. Among the fossil records, the most important is the Nojiri-ko Insect Fauna from the last glaciation. This fauna comes from the Nojiri-ko Site Group in Nagano Prefecture. It includes 86 species of beetles from the Nojiri-ko and the Biwajima-oki Formations. The fossils were excavated in strata dating to 37.9–60.4ka at the Nojiri-ko Formation, comparable to MIS 3 (Kondo et al., 2018). The Biwajima-oki Peat Formation dates to ca 100–70ka (Shiyake and Fossil Insect Research Group for Nojiri-ko-Excavation (FIRGNE), 2014). These faunas are dominated by aquatic beetles, ground beetles, phytophagous and coprophagous species.