The new species was likely omnivorous which explains the paucity of external damage on contemporaneous plant foliage. Visible mouthparts made it possible to assess the efficiency of the mandibular food uptake system in comparison to a wide array of extant species. The ovipositor shape indicates that ground was the preferred substrate for eggs. Given the herein presented and other remains, it follows that this group experienced an early diversification and, additionally, occurred in high individual numbers. This combination of characters unambiguously supports lobeattids as stem relatives of all living Orthoptera (crickets, grasshoppers, katydids). possessed a sword-shaped ovipositor with valves interlocked by two ball-and-socket mechanisms, lacked jumping hind-legs, and certain wing venation features. We investigated hundreds of samples of a new lobeattid species from the Xiaheyan locality using a combination of photographic techniques, including reflectance transforming imaging, geometric morphometrics, and biomechanics to document its morphology, and infer its phylogenetic position and ecological role. The proposed taphonomic model represents a new fossilization pathway from land to sea and provides new directions for prospecting Paleozoic deposits in the search for insects.Ī high portion of the earliest known insect fauna is composed of the so-called ‘lobeattid insects’, whose systematic affinities and role as foliage feeders remain debated. Inducing insect carcasses to sink, such as storms. Observed differences in insect preservation and assemblage composition across the sequence are found to correlate with lithology and are best explained by distance from land, and the action of events That reached the bay via winds and surface currents were buried sub-contemporaneously with bivalves below the storm wave base. In addition, bottom currents transported mud intraclasts towards the basin, where sinking insects Ground-touching waves provoked the erosion of muds at shallow depths leading to mass mortalities among mollusc communities due to rising anoxia, turbidity and water turbulence. Intercalations of crevasse channels and splays that laterally interlock with marine black shales and bioclastic limestones point to deposition in an interdelta bay. The sediments, lithostratigraphically assigned to the Yanghugou Fm., represent a regressional marine sequence formed at the southern margin of the Qilian Inland Sea.
Accordingly, the insect-bearing strata are of latest Bashkirian (latest Duckmantian) to middle Moscovian (Bolsovian) age. Here, we present high-resolution documentation of litho- and biofacies, biostratigraphy and geochronology of the up to 100m thick type section. Despite its evolutionary significance, both the age and depositional environment remained poorly constrained. The Early Pennsylvanian Xiaheyan entomofauna (Ningxia, China) is among the earliest assemblages of winged insects known so far, and therefore provides an essential input on deciphering the early diversification of this group.