Abstract
Three new palaeopteran insects are described from the Middle Permian (Guadalupian) of Salagou Formation in the Lodève Basin (South of France), viz. the diaphanopterodean Alexrasnitsyniidae fam. n., based on Alexrasnitsynia permiana gen. et sp. n., the Parelmoidae Permelmoa magnifica gen. et sp. n., and Lodevohymen lapeyriei gen. et sp. n. (in Megasecoptera or Diaphanopterodea, family undetermined). In addition the first record of mayflies attributed to family Syntonopteridae (Ephemeroptera) is reported. These new fossils clearly demonstrate that the present knowledge of the Permian insects remains very incomplete. They also confirm that the Lodève entomofauna was highly diverse providing links to other Permian localities and also rather unique, with several families still not recorded in other contemporaneous outcrops.
Highlights
Before the tremendous effort of collect of Dr Jean Lapeyrie who brought together a large collection of thousands of fossils, the ‘red’ Middle Permian Salagou Formation (Lodève Basin) was considered devoid of fossils
We describe four new fossil insects from the Salagou Formation those correspond to important new taxa
The Permian genus and species Walasua maculata Tan, 1980 is based on a very fragmentary wing. It has some similarities with Alexrasnitsynia in the posterior branches of RP regularly organised, partial fusion of MA with RP, MA closely parallel to R, but structures like area between RA and costal margin, CuA, or CuP are not preserved in Walasua, rendering difficult the comparison with Alexrasnitsynia (Tan 1980)
Summary
Before the tremendous effort of collect of Dr Jean Lapeyrie who brought together a large collection of thousands of fossils, the ‘red’ Middle Permian Salagou Formation (Lodève Basin) was considered devoid of fossils. Palaeoenvironment of Lodève Basin could be characterized as climate controlled playa with ephemeral pools colonized by aquatic clam shrimps (Conchostraca) and tadpole shrimps (Notostraca) together with insects (Lopez et al 2008). This palaeoenvironment was rich of insects those preservation exhibit considerable high diversity. The insect bodies have been destroyed by the abundant necrophagous animals (mainly Triops Schrank, 1803) and the decay due to taphonomic process (Gand et al 1997) This limitation renders difficult the attribution of some fossils, as can be seen below
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