The odonatan insects from the Paleocene of Menat, central France
André Nel and Corentin Jouault
The current knowledge on the Paleocene Odonata is rather limited despite the fact that it is a crucial period for the history of this order. An overview of the fossil odonatans from the Paleocene of Menat (France) is provided. We describe the anisopteran Macrogomphus menatensis sp. nov., first fossil representative of the family Epigomphidae, together with two zygopteran, viz. the dysagrionid Menatagrion hervetae gen. et sp. nov., and the new family Menatlestidae fam. nov., with its type species Menatlestes palaeocenicus gen. et sp. nov. The genus Menatagrion gen. nov. is the first Paleocene record of the Dysagrionidae, otherwise known by a putative Cretaceous genus and several Eocene to Miocene genera. Menatlestes gen. nov., putatively attributed to the stem-group of the Lestinoidea (Megalestidae and Lestidae), would correspond to the oldest record of this clade. With these three new taxa, and the previously described Thanetophilosina menatensis, Valerea multicellulata, “Lestes” zalesskyi, and an Aeshna species indet., the total number of Odonata from Menat goes up to seven species in total; two Anisoptera and five Zygoptera. Furthermore, we propose new evidences showing that the head characters defining the putative suborder Cephalozygoptera are due to deformations, very frequent among the fossil Odonatoptera. We treat the Cephalozygoptera as a junior synonym of Zygoptera.
Key words: Insecta, Anisoptera, Cephalozygoptera, Zygoptera, head morphology, Auvergne, France.
André Nel [anel@mnhn.fr], Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université des Antilles, EPHE, 57 rue Cuvier, CP 50, 75005 Paris, France. Corentin Jouault [jouaultc0@gmail.com], Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université des Antilles, EPHE, 57 rue Cuvier, CP 50, 75005 Paris, France; and Université Rennes, CNRS, Géosciences Rennes, UMR 6118, F-35000, Rennes, France; CNRS, Institut des Sciences de l’Évolution de Montpellier, Place Eugène Bataillon, UMR 5554 34095, Montpellier, France.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (for details please see creativecommons.org), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Full text (4,745.8 kB)