''Elephantomyia (Elephantomyia) longirostris'' is an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
species of
crane fly in the
family Limoniidae. The species is solely known from the
Middle Eocene deposits in the
Baltic Sea region of Europe. The species is one of six in its genus described from Baltic amber.
History and classification
''Elephantomyia (Elephantomyia) longirostris'' is known from the
holotype specimen, collection number MB.J.337, along with ten further adults which are preserved as
inclusions in transparent Baltic amber. As of 2015, nine of the amber specimens were included in the collections of the
Polish Academy of Sciences, while another was housed at the
Natural History Museum Humboldt University, and the last resided in a private collection.
Baltic amber is recovered from fossil bearing rocks in the Baltic Sea region of Europe. Estimates of the age date between 37 million years old, for the youngest sediments and 48 million years old. This age range straddles the middle Eocene, ranging from near the beginning of the Lutetian to the beginning of the Pribonian.
''E. longirostris'' is one of six crane fly species in the genus ''
Elephantomyia'' described from the Baltic amber, the others being ''
E. baltica'', ''
E. bozenae'', ''
E. brevipalpa'', ''
E. irinae'', and ''
E. pulchella''.
All six species are placed into the ''Elephantomyia'' subgenus ''Elephantomyia'' based on the lack of tibial spurs and by several aspects of the wing morphology.
The fossil was first studied by entomologist
Hermann Loew of the
Germany, with his
type description
A species description is a formal description of a newly discovered species, usually in the form of a scientific paper. Its purpose is to give a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differs from species that have be ...
of the new species being published in 1851 as ''
Toxorhina longirostris'', though he published the
nomen nudum
In taxonomy, a ''nomen nudum'' ('naked name'; plural ''nomina nuda'') is a designation which looks exactly like a scientific name of an organism, and may have originally been intended to be one, but it has not been published with an adequate descr ...
name a year earlier. The species was moved to the genus ''
Limnobiorhynchus'' in 1860 by
Carl Robert Osten-Sacken, and later moved by Osten-Sacken again, this time to the genus ''Elephantomyia''. The fossils were reexamined and the species redescribed in 2015 by paleoentomologist Iwona Kania of the
University of Rzeszów, who examined the holotype and the ten additional specimens. Kania noted that two of the specimens Loew had placed into the species did not match the type description or redescription well, each having a notably short rostrom. Further study of the two was suggested to clarify the species and genus they belong to.
Description
The ''E. longirostris'' type specimen and nine of the additional specimens are preserved males, while the eleventh specimen is a female. The body length ranges from approximately long, not including the
rostrum. The head has a rostrum which is longer than any other Baltic amber species. At long it is 4/5 the length of the wings and about equal to the entire body length. The rostrum has elongated
palpus
Pedipalps (commonly shortened to palps or palpi) are the second pair of appendages of chelicerates – a group of arthropods including spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders. The pedipalps are lateral to the chelicerae ("jaws") and ...
at the tip, each composed of four segments and having a system of microtrichia hairs.
The basal three palpus segments are elongated cylinders, while the apical segments are shortest. The fifteen segmented antennae are small, composed of an elongated
scape, widened
pedicle and thirteen
flagellomeres. As the flagellomeres progress from the base to the tip of the antennae they change from squat and crowded together to elongated. All of the flagellomeres have four
setae on them and the setae are each much longer than the flagellomere segments. The wings are between long with a pale brown
pterostigma
The pterostigma (plural: pterostigmata) is a group of specialized cells in the outer insect wing, wings of insects, which are often thickened or coloured, and thus stand out from other cells. It is particularly noticeable in dragonfly, dragonfli ...
that is oval in shape and further towards the wing base then in other Baltic amber species. The Rs vein, as designated by the
Comstock–Needham system, is as then the length of the connected R
2+3+4 vein.
References
External links
*
{{Taxonbar, from=Q22285076
Limoniidae
Prehistoric insects of Europe
Fossil taxa described in 1851
Taxa named by Hermann Loew
Diptera of Europe
Eocene insects
Baltic amber