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Euboeus mimonti Boieldieu, 1865, the oldest record of an extant species of Tenebrionidae (Coleoptera) and notes on other species identified as darkling beetles from the Late Pliocene of Willershausen (Germany)

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Abstract

Several fossil beetles from the Late Pliocene (Piacenzian) of Willershausen (Lower Saxony, Germany) previously identified as Tenebrionidae and Staphylinidae are reviewed. One species, formerly determined as “Staphylinoidea” is identified as Euboeus mimonti Boieldieu, 1865 (Tenebrionidae: Helopini). This species is the oldest record of an extant species of darkling beetles, which occurs now in the Balkans and Anatolia. The discovery of Euboeus mimonti in the Late Pliocene of Germany indicates that the range of this species was much wider, and the climate in the Late Pliocene in the modern territory of Lower Saxony was much milder. One species formerly determined as “Alleculidae gen. sp.” belongs to the subfamily Alleculinae (Tenebrionidae) and it is identified here as Pseudocistela aff. ceramboides. Two species, misidentified by a previous author as Tenebrionidae belong to Elateridae and Cerambycidae respectively. Generic and species composition, as well as the ratio of extinct and extant beetle taxa in the Willershausen Fossil Lagerstätte are discussed.

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Data availability

The original museum information about the material on fossil Coleoptera (Tenebrionidae and identified as Tenebrionidae) from Fossil Lagerstätte Willershausen (deposited in the Geoscience Museum at the Georg-August University in Göttingen) is available at ZENODO repository in open access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8318703.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are sincerely grateful to Dr Denis Kasatkin (Rostov Branch of the All-Russian Plant Qurantine Center, Rostov-on-Don, Russia) for confirming the identification of the fossil Cerambycidae and help with the diagnosis of the genus, Dr Francesco Vitali (Musée national d’histoire naturelle de Luxembourg) for sending important bibliographic sources and Ivan Chigray (ZIN) for the loan specimens of Euboeus mimonti. Two reviewers, André Nel (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France) and Wolfgang Schawaller (Staatliches Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart, Germany) added useful comments and corrections, for which the authors are very grateful. This work was supported by the state project AAAA-A17-117081640018-5 (Ministry of Higher Education and Science of the Russian Federation) for M.V. Nabozhenko.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Precaspian Institute of Biological Resources of the Daghestan Federal Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, M. Gadzhiev str. 45, Makhachkala , Republic of Dagestan, 367000, Russia

    Maxim V. Nabozhenko

  2. Dagestan State University, M. Gadzhiev str. 43a, Makhachkala, Republic of Dagestan, 367000, Russia

    Maxim V. Nabozhenko

  3. Natural History Museum of Denmark, Zoological Museum, Universitetsparken 15, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Josh Jenkins Shaw

  4. Geoscience Museum, Georg August University, Goldschmidtstraße 3, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Alexander Gehler

  5. Department of Animal Evolution and Biodiversity, Georg August University, Untere Karspüle 2, 37073, Göttingen, Germany

    Uwe Kaulfuss

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Nabozhenko, M.V., Jenkins Shaw, J., Gehler, A. et al. Euboeus mimonti Boieldieu, 1865, the oldest record of an extant species of Tenebrionidae (Coleoptera) and notes on other species identified as darkling beetles from the Late Pliocene of Willershausen (Germany). Palaeobio Palaeoenv 104, 141–151 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-023-00592-0

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