New discovery of Minlagerrontidae in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber (Hemiptera, Cicadomorpha, Clypeata)

Abstract

The recently erected family Minlagerrontidae, with a series of extremely unusual or even grotesque morphological features, is a bizarre Clypeata group known from the mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber in northern Myanmar. The hitherto known minlagerrontids are ascribed to two species within one genus (Minlagerron). We here report a new genus and species of the family, Megagerron zhuoi gen. et sp. nov., from the same amber biota. The new genus differs from the type genus, Minlagerron, in having a relatively large body size, somewhat compressed compound eyes and a series of tegminal traits. Noteworthily, the following two tegminal features possessed by the new genus are common in Clypeata, but different from these in Minlagerron: the prenodal veinlets on stem R + MP absent (vs. one veinlet present in Minlagerron) and the apical cell C5 open (vs. almost closed by the two terminal branches of CuA in Minlagerron). Our finding adds some novel information to the knowledge of the morphological and taxonomic paleo-diversity of this enigmatic Mesozoic hemipteran lineage.