The Archijassidae from the Jurassic of China (Hemiptera, Cicadomorpha, Membracoidea) and its palaeoecological significance

Abstract

ABSTRACT The extinct hemipteran family Archijassidae is recorded in the late Middle Triassic to mid-Cretaceous, which is regarded as the ‘ancestral’ group of Membracoidea. The archijassid species Kisa fasciata was previously known confined to the Middle Jurassic Itat Formation of Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Here, we report seventeen new specimens of K. fasciata from the Middle-Upper Jurassic Yangshuzhuang Formation in Jiyuan City, Henan Province, and the Middle Jurassic Yan’an Formation in Yan’an City, Shaanxi Province, which are located in Jiyuan Basin and Ordos Basin of northern China, respectively. The considerable intraspecific variation of K. fasciata is revealed. The new discovery extends the palaeobiogeographic distribution of Archijassidae in Eurasia, and indicates that K. fasciata would appear to widely distribute in the temperate low-altitude areas of eastern and northern Eurasia in the Middle Jurassic, which provides new insight into the palaeoecology of north central China and central Siberia during this time.