Cretamerus vulloi

Cretamerus vulloi gen. et sp. nov., a fossil bark-gnawing beetle (Cleroidea: Trogossitidae), is described from the Cretaceous amber (Cenomanian) of Fouras/Bois-Vert, France. It is the oldest known record confirmed for the entire superfamily Cleroidea on the European continent. The fine state of preservation and the transparency of the amber matrix make it possible to determine certain morphological character states for the fossil and insert them into a character matrix of Trogossitidae genera to suggest an internal phylogenetic position for C. vulloi. The resulting tree reveals the basal position of C. vulloi within the lophocaterine clade and it is proposed that it may form an extinct branch of the Recent Decamerini. Some remarks on the palaeobiogeography of the Trogossitidae are also provided. Two other possible Trogossitidae from the Cretaceous amber (Albian) of Spain are also discussed and figured.Peer reviewe

A molecular phylogeny of the checkered beetles and a description of E

We provide the first molecular phylogeny of the clerid lineage (Coleoptera: Cleridae, Thanerocleridae) within the superfamily Cleroidea to examine the two most recently proposed hypotheses of higher level classification. Phylogenetic relationships of checkered beetles were inferred from approximately ∼5000nt of both nuclear and mitochondrial rDNA (28S, 16S and 12S) and the mitochondrial protein-coding gene COI. A worldwide sample of ∼70 genera representing almost a quarter of generic diversity of the clerid lineage was included and phylogenies were reconstructed using Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood approaches. Results support the monophyly of many proposed subfamilies but were not entirely congruent with either current classification system. The subfamilial relationships within the Cleridae are resolved with support for three main lineages. Tillinae are supported as the sister group to all other subfamilies within the Cleridae, whereas Thaneroclerinae, Korynetinae and a new subfamily formally described here, Epiclininae subf.n., form a sister group to Clerinae+Hydnocerinae. © 2013 The Royal Entomological Society