Its holotype is a complete female with a body length of 10.9 mm and an estimated total forewing length of more than 12.0 mm. The second new species, Stenobabinskaia chenjieae , is based on another amber specimen with elongated wings and detailed preservation of the legs. The new genus is distinguished from other babinskaiid genera by a combination of wing and body characters, including the small body size, a simple MP vein, numerous presectoral crossveins and paired long processes on the female sixth sternum.

Both fossils came from the Hukawng Valley in Tanai Township, Myikyina District, Kachin State, Myanmar. Uranium-lead dating of zircons from the amber deposit’s volcanoclastic matrix places the deposit at 98.8 ± 0.6 million years. The authors confirmed that the amber specimen reported in the study was collected and purchased before June 2017.

The holotypes are deposited in the Xiachong Amber Museum in Beijing, China. Milubabinskaia zhiqiae combines wing characters most similar to those of Burmobabinskaia with a pair of long processes on the female sixth sternum, a feature also reported in Electrobabinskaia and Pseudobabinskaia . The generic name combines “Milu,” referring to Père David’s deer, with Babinskaia , reflecting the authors’ description of the fossil as having a mosaic-like combination of characters from other babinskaiid genera.

Stenobabinskaia chenjieae is characterized by medial fusion of the RP stem with RA in both fore- and hind wings, a straight oblique presectoral crossvein and marginally forked MP2 branches in the hind wing. The study distinguishes six morphotypes of female genitalia among babinskaiids from Kachin amber. They differ in features including the presence or absence of posterior projections on sternum 6, distinct gonocoxites 8, and additional lobes or digging setae on gonocoxites 9.

The female of Milubabinskaia zhiqiae has a sixth sternum extended into paired long lobes, a fused semilunar gonocoxite 8, lateral projections on tergum 9, and paired lobe-like gonocoxites 9. Long sternal projections in babinskaiids have previously been interpreted as possible courtship or mating adaptations, and the researchers suggest that the specialized sternum of Milubabinskaia might have had a similar function. They state that the function of its distinct gonocoxites 8, the additional lobes of gonocoxites 9 and the anteriorly projecting tergum 9 is difficult to determine.

The varied anatomy therefore provides evidence consistent with diversified reproductive behavior, rather than proof of a specific reproductive function. The presence of digging setae on the female gonocoxites 9 of Calobabinskaia xiai may be indicative of a fossorial larval lifestyle, although many babinskaiid species are considered arboreal. The legs of Stenobabinskaia chenjieae bear regularly spaced spinous setae, paired tibial spurs and a bilobed arolium.

The authors identify possible functions for the setae and spurs, including defense against small predators or parasites and improved grip on struggling prey, but frame these as functional hypotheses. A bilobed arolium is also present in Calobabinskaia xiai and is typical of Nymphidae, whose adults are generally arboreal. This shared feature suggests, but does not demonstrate, a similar arboreal lifestyle for S. chenjieae .

The authors also note that the presence of digging setae in C. xiai might indicate ecological divergence between its adults and larvae. The authors additionally reconsider the sex of the holotype of Burmobabinskaia tenuis , originally identified as a male. They argue that the prominent sclerite on abdominal segment 8 is more likely to be the gonocoxites 8 of a female, while the ventrally expanded tergum 9 and enclosed gonocoxites 9 resemble females of other babinskaiids.

The interpretation is based on comparisons of sclerite and genital morphology with other specimens. Before these additions, Babinskaiidae contained 22 species in 16 genera, all known from the Cretaceous across approximately 35 million years, from the Barremian to the Cenomanian. Its records came from three deposits: the Lower Cretaceous Zaza Formation in Russia, the Crato Formation in Brazil and the mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber in Myanmar.

Consequently, the ecology and behavior associated with many structures remain unresolved, and the paper does not establish a single lifestyle for the group.

Subject of Research: Fossil morphology and diversity of Cretaceous babinskaiid lacewings

Article Title: New Cretaceous fossils highlight the diverse reproductive behavior and life-styles of the extinct family Babinskaiidae ( Insecta , Neuroptera )

Article References: Lu, X., Wang, F., Zhuo, D., & Liu, X. (2026). New Cretaceous fossils highlight the diverse reproductive behavior and life-styles of the extinct family Babinskaiidae (Insecta, Neuroptera). Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift, 73(1), 95-104. https://doi.org/10.3897/dez.73.184533

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/dez.73.184533

Keywords: Babinskaiidae, Cretaceous fossils, Kachin amber, Neuroptera, lacewings, fossil classification, female genitalia, leg morphology, Myanmar, paleontology, Cretaceous, fossils

The fossil came from Noije Bum Hill in the Hukawng Valley of Kachin State, northern Myanmar, in deposits commonly called Kachin amber. Uranium-lead dating of zircons in the surrounding sedimentary matrix places the amber at the earliest Cenomanian, with an age of 98.79 ± 0.62 million years, although the authors use the broader mid-Cretaceous designation of Cenomanian–Albian because some Kachin deposits may be older. The amber was mined before 2017, and the single specimen was legally purchased from an Italian dealer in January 2018. It was subsequently cut, ground and polished into a flattened prism measuring approximately 12 by 7 by 4.5 millimetres, allowing the insect to be examined with stereomicroscopy, macro photography and stacked digital imaging.

The adult male E. ditomeus is 3.1 millimetres long, making it the smallest member of Vetanthocoridae described in the study; previously known species in that family range from 4.3 to 13.7 millimetres. Its body is elongated and dorsoventrally flattened, with a broad head, prominent eyes, long sensory setae and a nearly trapezoidal pronotum. The forewings are parallel-sided and extend beyond the abdomen. More than ten long, slightly curved veins radiate from a cross vein along the corium–membrane boundary, a pattern that differs from the four or five free veins typical of living cimicoids. The abdomen also retains separate dorsal laterotergites on segments I to VIII rather than having them fused with the central tergites as they generally are in extant members of the superfamily.

Those two features support placement in Vetanthocoridae, an extinct family known mainly from compression fossils in China before the discovery of an amber specimen of Pubivetanthocoris carinalis in Kachin amber. E. ditomeus is therefore the second recorded member of the family preserved in mid-Cretaceous amber. At the same time, the new fossil departs from established vetanthocorid patterns in several respects. Its hemelytra are parallel rather than curved, the embolar fracture is absent, an exceptionally long trichobothrium occurs at the corium–membrane boundary, and the front tibia expands strongly toward its apex. These differences prevent the authors from confidently assigning the genus to either of the family’s two tribes, even though its antennal proportions support a provisional association with Vetanthocorini.

Although the bug’s overall appearance resembles members of Anthocoridae, it lacks the tribal features that would make that resemblance decisive. Its body shape and enlarged femora recall the anthocorid genus Scoloposcelis, while its spiny tibiae and expanded foreleg resemble Xylocoris and Blaptostethus. Ecpaglocoris, however, has no ventral teeth on the femora, no visible opening of the paired abdominal uradenia and a differently shaped ostiolar peritreme. It also retains a spongy adhesive structure, or fossula spongiosa, only on the forelegs, whereas it is present on the middle and hind tibiae in the two comparison genera. The authors interpret the patchwork of superficial similarities as possible convergence rather than evidence of close relationship, cautioning that similar shapes and enlarged legs may reflect similar habits and habitats.

Placement in Cimicoidea as a whole is more secure. The specimen has a four-segmented labium, a distinct costal fracture defining the cuneus, a hemelytral membrane without a closed cell, a spongy tibial structure, no ventral laterotergites, and parameres inserted near the midline of the genital capsule. It can therefore be assigned to the superfamily, even though its unusual combination of membrane venation, abdominal laterotergites and genital anatomy does not fit neatly within any living family. The study’s central result is not merely the addition of another fossil species. The amber preserves male genitalia in unusual clarity, allowing researchers to document a morphology that was previously unknown for Vetanthocoridae and largely inaccessible in compression fossils, where such structures are usually not visible.

The genital capsule, or pygophore, is symmetrical, broad where it joins abdominal segment VIII, dorsally depressed and narrowed toward a rounded posterior end. From near its dorsal midline arise two very slender, moderately curved parameres directed toward the front of the insect. Their tips are acute, their left and right forms mirror one another, and a groove runs along each entire structure. The species name ditomeus refers to these paired, knife- or sickle-shaped elements. In most living cimicoids, genital asymmetry is sinistral: the right paramere is generally absent, and the left is the functional component. Symmetrical genitalia also occur in Plokiophilidae and in some related superfamilies, but those groups do not combine symmetry with this fossil’s unusual grooved parameres and other diagnostic traits.

The grooves invite comparison with the intromittent parameres of Anthocoridae, Cimicidae and Polyctenidae, whose males use the grooved left paramere as an intromittent organ during traumatic insemination. A membranous aedeagus is guided into the female through the acute, grooved structure. Ecpaglocoris has two such structures rather than one, raising the possibility that a different coupling arrangement was used. The authors speculate that the male may have approached from either side, but there is no behavioural evidence in the amber and no preserved female E. ditomeus. The claim that the species practised traumatic insemination therefore remains a morphological hypothesis rather than a directly observed behaviour, and the insect’s mating posture cannot be reconstructed with confidence.

The fossil also shows how little is known about the internal relationships of Vetanthocoridae. The family was erected for compression fossils from the Middle Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous of China, and information about their male genitalia has been limited. Figures of Vetanthocoris decorus and Collivetanthocoris rapax suggest that they may have possessed symmetrical, well-developed pygophores, but the available material does not establish whether they shared the grooved, sickle-shaped parameres of Ecpaglocoris. A single amber inclusion can therefore provide a useful anatomical reference point, but it cannot by itself establish a family-wide evolutionary pattern. The authors specifically call for detailed phylogenetic studies to evaluate the monophyly and internal relationships of the recognised family-level groups within Cimicoidea.

From an evolutionary perspective, the specimen appears to preserve what the authors call plesiomorphic symmetry alongside a potentially distinctive feature: grooves on both parameres. Symmetry alone is not unique to Vetanthocoridae, and grooved parameres have evolved independently in several true-bug lineages. The unusual pairing may be peculiar to Ecpaglocoris, or it may reveal a trait shared by the extinct family if the anatomy of other vetanthocorids is eventually shown to match. Ecpaglocoris is also unusual within Vetanthocoridae in its small body, straight-sided hemelytra, missing embolar fracture, exceptionally long trichobothrium and expanded foreleg. The amber fossil therefore expands both the anatomical and evolutionary known range of an obscure extinct family, while leaving the wider evolutionary history of cimicoid genital symmetry, traumatic insemination and family-level relationships unresolved.

Subject of Research: Description of a mid-Cretaceous cimicoid true bug from Burmese amber with unusual male genitalia

Article Title: A new remarkable cimicoid genus and species ( Hemiptera , Heteroptera , Cimicomorpha ) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber, with implications for its aberrant male genitalia

Article References: Yamada, K., Yamamoto, S., & Takahashi, Y. (2023). A new remarkable cimicoid genus and species (Hemiptera, Heteroptera, Cimicomorpha) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber, with implications for its aberrant male genitalia. Fossil Record, 26(1), 27-38. https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.26.86784

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/fr.26.86784

Keywords: amber fossil, Cretaceous amber, true bugs, Vetanthocoridae, male genitalia, traumatic insemination, palaeoentomology, Cimicoidea, Kachin amber, insect evolution, remarkable, cimicoid

Stag beetles, known scientifically as Lucanidae, are among the most recognizable insects on Earth. With roughly 1,800 living species in 145 genera, they are found across all major zoogeographical regions but are especially abundant in the tropics of Southeast Asia. Many adult males sport enormous, antler-like mandibles that they use to wrestle rivals for mates and food — weapons that can push the total body length of the largest species to 120 millimeters. Against that backdrop, the discovery of stag beetles barely three millimeters long is startling. The smallest living aesaline stag beetles reach about three millimeters, but no extinct lucanid of comparable size had ever been reported before now.

The new study, led by a researcher at the Hokkaido University Museum in Sapporo, Japan, describes four lucanid specimens preserved in amber from the Hukawng Valley in Kachin State. All four belong to the primitive subfamily Aesalinae, considered one of the earliest diverging lineages within the stag beetle family tree. One specimen represents a new species of the genus Protonicagus, named Protonicagus mandibularis for its unusual mandible shape. A second represents an entirely new genus and species, Cretognathus minutissimus — the species name is Latin for

The miniature dimensions of these ancient beetles carry real scientific weight. Amber, as a preservation medium, tends to favor small organisms, since larger and stronger insects can often tear themselves free of sticky resin before it engulfs them. Stag beetles, with their robust bodies and powerful musculature, are precisely the kind of insects one would expect to escape entrapment, which helps explain why only nine lucanid species had previously been described from amber deposits anywhere in the world. The fact that the newly reported specimens are so small may therefore reflect both a genuine biological signal — a Cretaceous trend toward miniaturization in several unrelated beetle lineages — and the filtering effect of the fossil record itself. Either way, the discovery suggests that the true diversity of Mesozoic stag beetles is likely underestimated, with tiny species slipping through the net of both preservation and study.

The four specimens also illuminate the biogeographic history of the group. Three of the new fossils belong to the tribe Ceratognathini, a group whose living members are restricted today to Australia and South America — southern landmasses that once formed part of Gondwana. Their presence in mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar fits a broader pattern in which the Kachin amber fauna contains numerous lineages with Gondwanan affinities. The Burma Terrane, the landmass that carried the Hukawng Valley forests during the Cretaceous, is thought to have drifted as an island arc before colliding with Asia, and its biota preserves traces of these ancient southern connections. The fourth specimen, Protonicagus mandibularis, belongs to the tribe Nicagini, whose modern representatives live in the Northern Hemisphere, adding a contrasting distributional thread to the assemblage.

Amber fossils offer advantages over the compressed impressions that make up most of the stag beetle fossil record. Roughly thirty fossil lucanid species have been described worldwide, but most are known from impression fossils in sedimentary rocks, where fine details of the exoskeleton are crushed or lost. Amber, by contrast, can preserve delicate structures such as antennae, tarsi, and mouthparts in three dimensions, allowing direct comparison with living species. The earliest known stag beetle, Juraesalus atavus, comes from Middle Jurassic deposits of Inner Mongolia dating to around 165 million years ago, and several aesaline impression fossils are known from the Lower and Upper Cretaceous of China and Kazakhstan. But the Kachin amber specimens, preserved near the Albian–Cenomanian boundary about 99 million years ago, now constitute the richest single source of Mesozoic lucanid diversity, with nine species described from this deposit alone.

The systematic placement of the new fossils touches on an unresolved debate in stag beetle classification. Aesalinae, the subfamily to which all four specimens belong, is generally regarded as one of the early diverging branches of Lucanidae, and its members retain several primitive features, including undivided eyes, small mandibles, and partially or non-geniculate antennae. Yet molecular studies have produced conflicting results about whether Aesalinae as currently defined forms a natural group, with some analyses suggesting that the tribe Nicagini lies outside the rest of the subfamily. The elusive phylogenetic position of Nicagini — small beetles whose living relatives inhabit sandy shores and dunes rather than decaying wood — remains one of the puzzles of lucanid evolution, and each new fossil specimen bearing on this lineage is valuable for testing competing hypotheses.

The new species themselves display distinctive anatomy. Protonicagus mandibularis, at 3.78 millimeters including mandibles, joins its previously described congener Protonicagus tani as the second species of a genus otherwise known only from Kachin amber. Cretognathus minutissimus, at just 2.83 millimeters, becomes the smallest known stag beetle of all, edging out two additional Ceratognathini specimens that measure 2.78 and 2.72 millimeters but are too incompletely preserved for confident generic assignment. These measurements place the fossils well below the lower size range of most living aesalines, which typically reach up to ten millimeters, and far below the giant tropical lucanines that dominate the family’s modern diversity.

Miniaturization among Kachin amber beetles is not unique to stag beetles. Several unrelated lineages from the same deposit show similarly reduced body sizes, hinting at ecological pressures in the Cretaceous forests of the Burma Terrane that favored small body plans — perhaps the exploitation of microhabitats within decaying wood, leaf litter, or bark crevices. For saproxylic insects like lucanids, whose larvae feed on deadwood at various stages of decomposition, small size may have opened ecological opportunities unavailable to larger relatives. The pattern also raises questions about how the exaggerated mandibles of male stag beetles, so prominent in modern species, evolved in lineages whose entire bodies were smaller than the mandibles of their living descendants.

The discovery underscores how much of the deep-time diversity of familiar insect groups remains hidden. Stag beetles are among the most intensively collected and studied beetle families, yet a single amber deposit has now doubled the known Mesozoic species count and revealed body sizes never before recorded for the family. As more Kachin amber specimens are examined with modern imaging techniques, further surprises — including additional miniature lineages and clearer resolution of early lucanid relationships — seem likely to emerge from the ancient resin.

Subject of Research: Paleontology

Article Title: The smallest stag beetles ( Coleoptera , Lucanidae ): hidden paleodiversity in mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber from northern Myanmar

Article References: Yamamoto, S. (2023). The smallest stag beetles (Coleoptera, Lucanidae): hidden paleodiversity in mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber from northern Myanmar. Evolutionary Systematics, 7(2), 211-235. https://doi.org/10.3897/evolsyst.7.104597

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/evolsyst.7.104597

Keywords: stag beetles, Kachin amber, Cretaceous, paleontology, Lucanidae, miniaturization, Gondwana, Myanmar amber, smallest, stag, beetles, Coleoptera

Modern crickets, along with most of their orthopteran relatives, are built around a simple biomechanical principle: powerful hind legs. The hind femora are inflated with muscle to power explosive jumps, an escape strategy that has served the group for hundreds of millions of years. Mole crickets went the opposite direction, evolving shovel-like fossorial forelegs for digging while their hind legs became reduced. Wetas and their relatives in the family Gryllacrididae abandoned jumping altogether and crawl most of the time, with three pairs of legs nearly equal in size. Fortigryllus xiangrui appears to have converged on that crawling lifestyle, but in a lineage far removed from the modern raspy crickets, and at a time when dinosaurs still dominated terrestrial ecosystems.

The specimen itself is a small apterous insect, about 3.8 millimeters long from head to the deduced abdominal apex, embedded in a translucent yellow piece of amber collected from the Hukawng Valley in Kachin Province. The holotype, registered as NIGP208736, is housed at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The amber was legally collected from Tanai Township in June 2016, and the researchers spent years preparing and analyzing it, polishing the piece with progressively finer sandpaper and polishing powder to expose the fossil for study. Photographs were captured with a Zeiss Stereo Discovery V16 microscope system, combining roughly 35 to 50 individual focal planes into stacked composite images that reveal the three-dimensional structure of the specimen in remarkable detail.

Kachin amber has become one of the most important windows into Cretaceous life. Its age is constrained by biostratigraphy to the late Albian to early Cenomanian, and uranium-lead dating of zircon crystals in the associated volcanoclastic matrix puts a maximum age of 98.79 plus or minus 0.62 million years, placing it at the very beginning of the Cenomanian. The deposit has yielded an enormous diversity of arthropods, and crickets are no exception. Before the surge of amber discoveries, the Mesozoic fossil record of Gryllidea, the infraorder that includes true crickets and their closest relatives, was sparse, with most early specimens preserved as two-dimensional impression fossils that captured only limited anatomical detail. Amber inclusions changed that, preserving delicate three-dimensional structures that compression fossils simply cannot.

To date, 48 genera and 75 species of Cretaceous crickets have been recorded across eight families, including both extant lineages such as Gryllidae, Trigonidiidae, Mogoplistidae, Oecanthidae, Gryllotalpidae, and Myrmecophilidae, and extinct families like Protogryllidae and Baissogryllidae. The oldest known fossil cricket is Protogryllus grandis from the Late Triassic. But the new specimen stands apart from all of them. Its combination of features does not match any known family, leading the researchers to place it as family incertae sedis, meaning its precise familial position remains uncertain.

Several diagnostic characters do anchor Fortigryllus within Gryllidea. The presence of club-shaped setae, variable in size and irregularly distributed, on the inner basal part of the cerci is considered one of the apomorphies of the cricket clade. Similar structures occur in Stenopelmatidae, but there they are uniform in size and arranged in regular rows, a distinction that helps separate the two groups. Combined with three-segmented tarsi, these features firmly place the new fossil within the cricket infraorder. The specimen is likely an adult or at least a late-instar nymph, based on the presence of oval-shaped tympana on the forelegs, the hearing organs that crickets use to detect each other’s songs.

Ruling out candidate families required careful comparison. The fossil lacks the specialized digging forelegs of Gryllotalpidae, which bear two, three, or four claws on the fore tarsi, claws entirely absent in the new specimen. It lacks the oval body shape, extremely inflated hind femur, and pseudo-segmented erect cerci of Myrmecophilidae, the ant-loving crickets. Within Grylloidea, it cannot be assigned to Oecanthidae, which have a distinctive arrangement of apical spurs on the hind tibia and equal-sized basal tarsomeres on the fore and mid legs. Trigonidiidae are excluded because the fossil lacks subapical spurs and has only one apical spur on the metatibia. Mogoplistidae are ruled out by the absence of scales on the body and the lack of serrulations on the hind tibiae. Gryllidae typically have three apical spurs on the fore tibia, nearly hemispherical heads, and strong long hind tibial spurs, none of which match the new fossil.

The closest similarities lie with Phalangopsidae and Pteroplistidae, two families whose members often have relatively long legs and reduced apical spurs on the hind tibia. The new fossil shares two apical spurs on the fore tibia with both groups. One of the most striking characters of Phalangopsidae, as defined by Souza-Dias in 2015, is a scape as broad as the fastigium, the region between the antennal bases. In the new fossil the scape is slightly narrower than the fastigium, which is not an exact match. However, another proposed synapomorphy of Phalangopsidae, an apex of the last maxillary palpomere that is curved, is present in the fossil but absent in Pteroplistidae. Many but not all Phalangopsidae also have a broadened apical portion of that palpomere, which the fossil lacks, a condition the authors interpret as probably plesiomorphic. Taken together, the evidence suggests the new cricket could belong to the stem group of Phalangopsidae, though the authors emphasize this attribution remains tentative because the genitalia, crucial characters for convincing family-level placement in crickets, are not preserved in the specimen.

The functional morphology of the legs is where the story becomes truly intriguing. The fore femur measures 2.7 millimeters, the mid femur 2.1 millimeters, and the hind femur 3.1 millimeters on the left side, all conspicuously sturdy and covered with sparse setae. The hind femur is only slightly longer and stronger than the fore and mid femora, a proportion radically different from typical Grylloidea, where the metafemur is dramatically inflated. The authors note that this robustness is unlikely to be an artifact of preservation, because the specimen shows well-preserved articulated structures without signs of compression or deformation. Instead, the combination of relatively developed fore and midlegs with relatively undeveloped hindlegs parallels the condition seen in Gryllacrididae, leading the researchers to tentatively propose crawling as the primary mode of locomotion for this Mesozoic cricket.

This is not the first time Cretaceous insects have shown such unusual leg proportions. Spinoberotha mickaelacrai, a lacewing larva preserved in Lebanese amber, bore equally strong spines on all six legs adapted for catching prey, whereas its modern relatives use only the forelegs for that function. The Mesozoic Chresmodidae, often allied with Phasmatodea, developed extraordinary legs with up to 20 to 30 tarsomeres as an adaptation for skimming across water surfaces. These examples suggest that the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were times of intense morphological experimentation among insects, and that only a fraction of the resulting body plans survived into the Cenozoic and persist in the modern fauna. Fortigryllus xiangrui, with its strange egalitarian legs and uncertain family ties, adds a new branch to that vanished diversity and hints at how much more remains to be discovered in the amber forests of the mid-Cretaceous.

Subject of Research: A newly described mid-Cretaceous cricket from Kachin amber with unusually robust legs on all three pairs

Article Title: A new weird cricket ( Orthoptera , Gryllidea ) from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber in northern Myanmar

Article References: Ji, X., Nel, A., Xiao, C., Gorochov, A. V., Jarzembowski, E. A., Ma, Z., & Xu, C. (2025). A new weird cricket (Orthoptera, Gryllidea) from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber in northern Myanmar. Fossil Record, 28(2), 219-230. https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.28.162805

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/fr.28.162805

Keywords: Kachin amber, Fortigryllus xiangrui, Gryllidea, Orthoptera, Cretaceous insects, paleontology, Myanmar amber, cricket evolution, fossil insects, locomotion, Phalangopsidae, mesofemur

The defining feature of Noo-Noo is its mouthparts. These structures were exceptionally long and flexible, reaching nearly twice the length of the insect’s body. Among modern planthoppers, the closest living relatives of the newly described species, mouthparts are built like a simple needle: rigid, straight, and suited to piercing plant tissue to draw out fluids. Noo-Noo and its ancient kin, by contrast, carried feeding organs that could bend and extend, allowing them to reach food sources inaccessible to insects with more conventional equipment — deep inside cracks and crevices in tree bark, where sugar-rich fluids could be tapped.

The study was led by Dolev Fabrikant and Dr. Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou of Tel Aviv University’s School of Zoology, part of the Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and the New Environmental School. The team examined fossil insects belonging to Neazoniidae, an ancient family of planthoppers, including 13 specimens preserved in Kachin amber from Myanmar. Kachin amber is one of the most important windows into Cretaceous terrestrial life, preserving organisms in extraordinary three-dimensional detail, and the Neazoniidae specimens it contains turned out to hold a surprise that only modern imaging technology could fully unpack.

Under close examination, the elongated mouthparts of the ancient insects revealed a surface densely covered with transverse folds. To determine whether these folds were merely decorative or structurally meaningful, the researchers turned to high-resolution micro-computed tomography, a technique that uses X-rays to reconstruct internal anatomy without damaging the fossil. The scans showed that the folds were integral to the structure itself rather than external ornamentation. Their likely function was to give the mouthparts flexibility while preventing them from kinking or collapsing under stress — much like a bendy drinking straw or a corrugated flexible hose, which can curve freely without pinching shut.

The fossils themselves provided further confirmation of this flexibility. In several specimens, the mouthparts were preserved in a bent position. Because amber freezes insects in place at the moment they are engulfed by resin, these bent postures represent snapshots of the animals as they were in life. The researchers therefore interpret the curled mouthparts as direct evidence that the structures were genuinely flexible while the insects were alive, not artifacts of preservation. Among the living relatives of Neazoniidae, no comparable structure is known, marking this as an ancient evolutionary solution that has since disappeared entirely.

The new species’ unusual appearance inspired its name. The epithet “Noo-Noo” was chosen after the friendly vacuum cleaner from the children’s television series Teletubbies, whose long, flexible hose bears an uncanny resemblance to the ancient insect’s feeding organ. The whimsical moniker belies the scientific weight of the find, but it also captures the essence of the discovery: an animal whose most distinctive feature looks like something engineered rather than evolved, a corrugated tube coiled within a creature smaller than a fingernail.

Why would an insect need such an elaborate feeding apparatus? Butterflies might seem an obvious comparison, since they use a flexible proboscis to drink nectar from flowers. The researchers, however, believe the resemblance is only superficial. The mouthparts of Noo-Noo pointed backward and functioned as a piercing-and-sucking system, a design that, like those of its modern relatives, is poorly suited to nectar feeding. Moreover, despite examining numerous fossils, the team found no convincing evidence of pollen accumulating on the insects’ bodies — the kind of sign that would indicate a role as pollinators. The butterfly analogy, in other words, fails on both anatomical and ecological grounds.

The explanation the researchers propose is more specialized: these insects were sap-suckers with a taste for what lies beneath the bark. Their long, flexible mouthparts could have snaked through narrow cracks in tree bark and guided the piercing organs toward deep vascular tissues, where nutrient-rich fluids flow. At the tip of the mouthpart sat another unusual feature — a structure with two grooved lobes that likely opened during feeding, helping to anchor the mouthpart against the walls of the crack. The researchers liken this mechanism to a wall plug expanding inside a drilled hole, holding the apparatus firmly in place while the insect fed.

The discovery may carry broader implications for understanding Cretaceous forest ecosystems. Long or corrugated feeding structures appeared in several unrelated insect groups during this period, raising the possibility that forests rich in thick-barked trees offered a competitive advantage to insects capable of reaching deeper tissues. The study notes that resin-producing forests of the Cretaceous were also associated with evidence of recurrent fires, and trees in fire-prone environments often develop thicker bark as protection. The researchers cautiously suggest that such conditions may have created ecological opportunities for unique feeding strategies — strategies that are almost entirely absent among planthoppers today, whose needle-like mouthparts reflect a very different set of environmental pressures.

Dr. Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou stated: “The discovery of ‘Noo-Noo,’ a new species that lived approximately 99 million years ago, gives us an extraordinary glimpse into the insect world of the age of the dinosaurs. This is not merely an insect previously unknown to science, but an animal that developed an evolutionary solution with almost no modern equivalent: a long, flexible, and durable feeding organ that likely enabled it to reach food deep within tree bark. The fact that similar structures appeared in several insect groups during the Cretaceous period suggests that ancient forests created ecological conditions and opportunities very different from those we know today. The discovery of a new species like this is therefore not simply the addition of another name to the tree of life, but another piece of the puzzle that enables us to reconstruct what ecosystems looked like and how they functioned tens of millions of years ago.”

For paleontologists, the find underscores the value of amber as a time capsule. Soft structures such as flexible mouthparts rarely survive in conventional compression fossils, where delicate anatomy is crushed or dissolved over geological time. Amber, by contrast, entombs specimens in three dimensions, preserving fine surface detail and even internal architecture that can be visualized with micro-CT scanning. Without such preservation, a feeding apparatus as unusual as Noo-Noo’s might never have been recognized, and the evolutionary experiment it represents would have vanished from the record altogether.

The description of Cretodorus noonoo adds a new branch to the tree of life and, just as importantly, a new data point in the history of ecological specialization. It shows that during the age of the dinosaurs, insects were experimenting with feeding strategies that have since been abandoned, shaped by forests whose structure and fire regimes differed markedly from those of the modern world. Each such discovery refines the picture of how Cretaceous ecosystems functioned — and reminds us that evolution’s portfolio has always included designs that today seem almost alien.

Subject of Research: A new Cretaceous planthopper species with flexible, corrugated mouthparts preserved in Kachin amber

Article Title: Rare discovery reveals a new species from the dinosaur age

Article References: Rare discovery reveals a new species from the dinosaur age. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Cretodorus noonoo, amber fossil, planthoppers, Neazoniidae, Kachin amber, Cretaceous period, micro-computed tomography, insect mouthparts, Tel Aviv University, paleontology, tree bark feeding, Myanmar amber