Content area
Full Text
Key words. Hemiptera, Heteroptera, Cydnidae, Sehirus, new species, fossil insect, bathyal, Cenozoic, Slovakia, Cerová, confocal profile
Abstract. The state of preservation of the bug Sehirus carpathiensis J.A. Lis, Vrsanský & Schlögl, sp. n. (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Cydnidae) from the Laksárska Nová Ves Formation at Cerová (Slovakia) supports extremely rapid sinking and burial in upper bathyal Early Miocene sediments. The specimen originated from land at most a few kilometers away, but transport via a river can be excluded as the head and wings are still attached. Its most likely source based on fossil flora and the habitat of several living representatives of the genus is a riparian habitat in an adjacent area of land. Phylogenetically the new species is closely related to both Oligocene and living representatives of the genus, thus indicating an early Paleogene origin of the genus (like many other living insect genera). The observations based on two samples from one area (Czech Republic) indicate that terrestrial insects are occasionally preserved in deep marine environments, but overlooked due to their usually fragmentary and obscure nature of the preservation. The newly developed KVANT full-profile confocal measurement revealed a sample roughness Ra = 1.3-2.0 µm and abdomen submerged in the matrix 300 µm deeper than the more rigid pronotum.
IntroductIon
The bottom of the sea is among the most common preservation environments of a diversity of fossils, including marine arthropods. Less frequently, such environments, down to 600 m, contain records of extinct terrestrial biota, such as those near the coast of California (Pierce, 1965). Several Lagerstätten are deposited in such environments, often containing fauna and flora from adjacent land such as in diverse Liassic localities in Germany, England (e.g., Holzmaden and Dobbertin; Ansorge, 1996, 2003, 2004) and Denmark (Rust, 1998). On the Kerch Peninsula in the Crimea a spectacularly preserved specimen of an unidentified Tarkhanian insect was recorded in association with the luminescent deep water fish, Vinciguerria merklini Danilchenko, 1946 (Photichthyidae) (see Zherikhin, 2002).
In Central Europe, particularly in the Carpathian region, deep-water sediments are often represented by flysh deposits, which rarely also contain terrestrial insects, such as the elytron of a described beetle (Prokop et al., 2004). The present find of a cydnid bug is associated with a diverse flora, including plant fructification organs of...