First Record of Anisoptera (Insecta: Odonata) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese Amber

Abstract

The fossil dragonfly Burmalindenia imperfecta gen. et sp. nov. is described from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber as the first record of the odonate suborder Anisoptera for this locality and one of the few records from amber in general. The inclusion comprises two fragments of the two hind wings of a dragonfly. The fossil can be attributed to a new genus and species of the family Gomphidae, presumably in the subfamily Lindeniinae, and features a strange teratological phenomenon in its wing venation.

Fossil dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera) from the early Eocene Okanagan Highlands, western North America

“…Morphological nomenclature follows that of Riek and Kukalová-Peck (1984) as employed by Garrison et al (2006), in common use among odonatologists. This differs slightly from the terminology often used in describing fossil Odonata, also based on that of Riek and Kukalová-Peck (1984) but as modified by subsequent authors (e.g., Bechly et al 2001;Kohli et al 2016;Schädel and Bechly 2016) in that the discoidal triangle, hypertriangle, submedian space, post-discoidal area, and IR2 of Riek and Kukalová-Peck (1984) are the triangle, supratriangle, cubito-anal space, discoidal field, and IRP2 of Garrison et al (2006), respectively. The discoidal field is not illustrated here (see Garrison et al 2006, Fig.…”

First record of hawker dragonflies from Eocene Baltic amber (Odonata: Anisoptera: Gomphaeschnidae)

“…Odonata are especially rare in Baltic amber (Bechly 1996a(Bechly , 1998, while they are very diverse and surprisingly frequent in Mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber (Zheng et al 2016a(Zheng et al ,b, 2017. Anisoptera are even more elusive, with only four specimens yet been reported from Baltic amber (Bechly 1998;Bechly & Wichard 2008), and only one more from Paris Basin amber (Fleck et al 2000), and three more from Burmese amber (Schädel & Bechly 2016;Zheng et al 2016Zheng et al , 2017. Schädel & Bechly (2016) already briefly mentioned one undescribed Macromiidae and two undescribed specimens (described herein) of Gomphaeschninae in the Baltic amber collection of SMNS.…”

“…Anisoptera are even more elusive, with only four specimens yet been reported from Baltic amber (Bechly 1998;Bechly & Wichard 2008), and only one more from Paris Basin amber (Fleck et al 2000), and three more from Burmese amber (Schädel & Bechly 2016;Zheng et al 2016Zheng et al , 2017. Schädel & Bechly (2016) already briefly mentioned one undescribed Macromiidae and two undescribed specimens (described herein) of Gomphaeschninae in the Baltic amber collection of SMNS. Based on totally three specimens of two new species of the same new genus we here describe the first record of hawker dragonflies in Baltic amber and only the third record of this Anisopteran group in amber at all (Zheng et al 2016b(Zheng et al , 2017.…”

New dragonflies and damselflies (Odonata) from the late Oligocene of Enspel (Rhineland-Palatinate, SW Germany)

“…We follow the higher classification of fossil and extant Odonatoptera based on the phylogenetic system of Bechly (1996Bechly ( , 2016, and employ the dragonfly wing venation nomenclature of Riek and Kukalová-Peck (1984), as modified by , Bechly (1996), and Jacquelin et al (2018).…”