Family diagnosis and paleogeography extended by asymmetrically deformed burmite liberiblattinid
摘要
In total, 97 species and over 4,000 specimens of cockroaches are known from the tropical Upper Cretaceous burmite. This paper describes a new North Myanmar amber cockroach belonging to the ecologically diverse Mesozoic family Liberiblattinidae Vršanský, 2002, along with a summarization of its palaeogeographic distributions over geologic time, cosmopolitan during Upper Jurassic and Early Cretaceous. Compostus supremus gen. et sp. n. resembles genera Stavba Vršanská et Vršanský in Vršanský et al. (2019) and Facioblatta Hinkelman, 2023, and autapomorphies (forewing membrane coloration, monstrous sponging palps, carved hind leg) justify unique feeding and/or reproductive behaviors. Besides asymmetries (foretarsi non-taphonomic L/R difference 171%), the holotype specimen reveals mutations extremely rare in burmite.