Fossil Record 21(2): 285-290, doi: 10.5194/fr-21-285-2018
A giant mite in Cretaceous Burmese amber
expand article infoJason Dunlop, Konrad Frahnert‡, Joanna Mąkol§
‡ private address: Maxim-Gorki Str. 15a, 14513 Teltow, Germany§ Department of Invertebrate Systematics and Ecology, Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Kożuchowska 5B, 51-631 Wrocław, Poland
© Jason Dunlop, Konrad Frahnert, Joanna Mąkol.
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: Dunlop J, Frahnert K, Mąkol J (2018) A giant mite in Cretaceous Burmese amber. Fossil Record 21(2): 285-290. https://doi.org/10.5194/fr-21-285-2018
Open Access
Abstract

An unusually large acariform mite is described as Immensmarischewbaccei gen. et sp. nov. from the Cretaceous (ca. 100 Ma)Burmese amber of Myanmar. With an idiosoma plus gnathosoma more than acentimetre long, it represents the largest unequivocal fossil mite everrecorded and approaches the maximum size of the largest living Acariformestoday. Although some details of the dorsal idiosoma are equivocal, the newfossil appears to belong to Smarididae (Prostigmata: Parasitengona:Erythraeoidea) and also represents the largest erythraeoid mite everdiscovered, indicating a clade of giant, possibly arboreal, mites in the LateCretaceous of southeastern Asia.