Journal of Paleontology, 92(6), 2018, p. 1028–1034 Copyright © 2018, The Paleontological Society 0022-3360/15/0088-0906 doi: 10.1017/jpa.2018.20
The earliest Elcanidae (Insecta, Orthoptera) from the Upper Triassic of North America
Yan Fang,1,3 A.D. Muscente,2,5 Sam W. Heads,3 Bo Wang,1,4 and Shuhai Xiao2*
1State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210008, China ⟨
yanfang@nigpas.ac.cn⟩; ⟨
bowang@nigpas.ac.cn⟩ 2Department of Geosciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, 24061, USA ⟨
a.d.muscente@
gmail.com⟩; ⟨
xiao@vt.edu⟩ 3Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1816 South Oak Street, Champaign, Illinois 61820-6960, USA
⟨
swheads@illinois.edu⟩ 4Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100101, China
⟨
bowang@nigpas.ac.cn⟩ 5Current address: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Abstract.—A new genus and species of the Elcanidae (Orthoptera, Elcanoidea), Cascadelcana virginiana n. gen. n. sp., is described based on a forewing specimen from the Upper Triassic (Norian) Cow Branch Formation in the Solite Quarry Lagerstätte near the North Carolina-Virginia boundary, USA. It is distinguished from other elcanid species by its RP+MA1 with six branches, M with two branches before stem MA1 fused with RP, and short CuA almost vertical against the posterior margin. This fossil represents the earliest definitive record of the family Elcanidae and the first orthopteran described from the Triassic of North America. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analyses show that the veins and a pterostigma-like structure on the wing of C. virginiana n. gen. n. sp. are preserved as carbonaceous compressions. The presence of a pterostigma-like structure in elcanids indicates that they may have evolved a particular flight mechanism distinct from those of other orthopterans.
UUID:
http://zoobank.org/49526c99-5da4-48e3-ba6e-7018b8f9b1ae Introduction
The extinct superfamily Elcanoidea is an unusual group of orthopteran insects that range from the early Permian to Late Cretaceous (Tillyard, 1937; Sharov, 1968; Gorochov, 1995; Grimaldi and Engel, 2005). Due to the lack of fossils with well- preserved body structures, its systematic position remains contro- versial (Fang et al., 2015). The long antennae and nymphal characters of elcanoids are similar to those of the Ensifera (Grimaldi and Engel, 2005; Peñalver and Grimaldi, 2010), but their wing venation and other adult characters are more consistent with the Caelifera (Béthoux and Nel, 2002). The superfamily consists of two families (Gorochov, 1995): Permelcanidae and Elcanidae. Permelcanids differ from elcanids in having CuA+ CuPa1 secondary branches (e.g., two branches in Promarlynovia venicosta Tillyard, 1937 and three branches in Meselcana madygenica Sharov, 1968), and RP ending in MA rather than in MA1. Elcanids have so far been reported only from Triassic–Cretaceous deposits in Eurasia and Brazil (Sharov, 1968; Gorochov et al., 2006; Peñalver and Grimaldi, 2010), whereas permelcanids occur in Permian– Triassic strata of Europe, Central Asia, and North America (Gorochov, 1995).
* Corresponding author Fossil Elcanoidea in North America are generally rare. The
earliest record is represented by the permelcanid Promartynovia venicosta Tillyard, 1937, which was reported from the Permian Wellington Formation of Kansas, but no species of the Elcani- dae have been formally described from North America. None- theless, two unnamed elcanoid specimens from the Cow Branch Formation of the Solite Quarry in Virginia, USA have been illustrated (Liutkus et al., 2010, fig. 3D; Muscente and Xiao, 2015, fig. 6). Here, we describe a new genus and species based on the well-preserved forewing illustrated in Muscente and Xiao (2015). This fossil is the earliest definitive record of the family Elcanidae, and the first formally described orthopteran from the Triassic of North America.
Geological setting
The specimen described in this study was collected by Dr. Nicholas Fraser fromthe CowBranch Formation in the Solite Quarry, Dan River-Danville Basin, near the North Carolina- Virginia boundary, United States (Fig. 1). The Dan River- Danville Basin is part the Mesozoic rift system in eastern North America that formed during the breakup of the Pangaea (Olsen et al., 1991). The basin fill consists of thick sediments of the Dan River Group that unconformably overlie Proterozoic–Paleozoic basement (Liutkus et al., 2010; Liutkus-Pierce et al., 2014).
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