Fossil Record 18(1): 37-42, doi: 10.5194/fr-18-37-2015
A new species of Lacinius in amber (Arachnida: Opiliones)
expand article infoP. G. Mitov‡, J. A. Dunlop§, D. Penney|
‡ Department of Zoology and Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, University of Sofia, 8 Dragan Tsankov Blvd., 1164 Sofia, Bulgaria§ current address: Department of Geology & Geophysics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208109, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, United States of America| Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
© P. G. Mitov, J. A. Dunlop, D. Penney.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Mitov PG, Dunlop JA, Penney D (2014) A new species of Lacinius in amber (Arachnida: Opiliones). Fossil Record 18(1): 37-42. https://doi.org/10.5194/fr-18-37-2015
Open Access
Abstract
A new specimenof Lacinius Thorell, 1876; (Opiliones: Phalangiidae) from EoceneBaltic amber is described. We interpret it as conspecific with a slightlyyounger record from the German Bitterfeld amber, originally referred to asthe extant species L. erinaceus Staręga, 1966. Our newspecimen reveals pedipalpal apophyses on both the patella and the tibia,features which we can now confirm in the Bitterfeld fossil too. This uniquecharacter combination for the genus justifies a new, extinct species:Lacinius bizleyi sp. nov. The Baltic amber inclusion dates to ca.44–49 Ma, and is thus the oldest putative example of Lacinius inthe fossil record. It is a further example of an arachnid species sharedbetween Baltic and Bitterfeld amber.