A surprise in a 50 million year old fossil of murderous insects: her genitals



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Much less is known about the way of life of the killer bugs of old, of which only about 50 species have been unearthed in fossil form. The newcomer to the peloton, named Aphelicophontes danjuddi, is one of the most intact to date.

The fossil was first extracted from a crown of rock in Colorado’s Green River Formation, a treasure trove of fossil fish and insects. The extraction process split the fossil into two mirror images, each spanning the length of the insect’s body, which ended up in the hands of different fossil collectors. One of them, Yinan Wang, contacted Sam Heads, Mr. Swanson’s advisor at the University of Illinois, with the feeling that it was “new to science and worthy of paper.” It was – so Mr. Wang donated the fossil to the team’s cause. Dan Judd, the owner of the coin’s partner fossil, quickly followed suit, giving the insect its species name.

With the fossil halves reunited, the researchers began the difficult task of placing the bug in its family tree. The impeccable quality of the fossil appears to have significantly facilitated this process, said Mercedes Burns, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County, who was not involved in the study.

The insect’s genital capsule, or pygophore, a cup-shaped shield that cradles the fragile phallus and other jiggly reproductive accessories until it is time for copulation, was particularly well preserved. It’s a hard shell that protects the penis, Mr Swanson said, much like the exoskeletal structures that swaddle the rest of the insect’s body.

What was left of the pygophore cracked in half when the fossil first split apart. But careful examination of the two prints revealed that some of the contents of the capsule had persisted. Among them were the insect’s basal plate, a stirrup-like structure, and pocket-shaped phallotheque notes, which supports the penis. In Living Assassin Bugs, the whole package looks like a Darth Vader mask or translucent athletic cut.

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