A True Bug with a True but Unique Chela in 100 Million-Year-Old Amber
(Thysanoptera), Dryinidae (Hymenoptera), and Carcinocorini (Heteroptera). Here, we report a new find from about 100 million-year-old Kachin amber, representing, to our knowledge, the first case of a fossil of the group Insecta with a chelate type of appendage. This find is only the fourth case of an independent or convergent evolution of such a structure. A quantitative morphological comparison of over 2000 grasping structures reveals that the proximal part of the chela (in this case, the femur) has a unique shape in the fossil, unparalleled in the fossil and modern fauna. Moreover, some other new fossils reported do not possess such a shape. The mouthparts, forming a distinct beak, allow us to identify the new fossil with the distinct chela as a representative of Heteroptera. Its short beak, together with some other characteristics, indicates that it most likely is a representative of Nepomorpha. Many other details of the fossil are not well preserved, but the overall appearance shows similarities to extant and fossil representatives of Gelastocoridae, a group of terrestrial predators.
Authors
- Marie K. Hörnig (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0401-2282)
- Florian Braig (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0640-6012)
- Carolin Haug
- Joachim T. Haug
- Fenja I. Haug
Institutions
- Richard Wolf (Germany) (DE)
- University of Rostock (DE)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- University of Oulu (FI)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Insects
- Published
- 2026-04-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/insects17040431
- Primary Topic
- Fossil Insects in Amber
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Volkswagen Foundation
- Universität Rostock