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The first complete beetle body fossil from the Australian early Late Permian fossil site Belmont is described here, †Ponomarenkia belmonthensis sp. nov., attributed to a new extinct family †Ponomarenkiidae. Shortly before a dramatic biodiversity crisis at the end of the Palaeozoic, it documents profound transitions in the evolution of Coleoptera, today by far the most species-rich group of insects and the largest order of organisms. †Ponomarenkia displays transitional states of several important characters, excluding it from the ancestral earliest stem-group coleopterans (e.g. †Tshecardocoleidae), but also from the four ‘modern’ extant suborders. In contrast to †Tshecardocoleidae, †Permocupedidae and †Rhomboleidae, it lacks the ancestral very broad and apically truncated prosternal process and a broad prothoracic postcoxal bridge, features suggesting a position in Coleoptera sensu stricto, i.e. the crown group of beetles. However, it does not share apomorphic features with extant Archostemata (e.g. narrow...

Middle–Late Triassic fossil beetles previously assigned to Polyphaga incertae sedis and new material from this period are described and illustrated. †Peltosynidae fam. nov. is introduced to contain the type genus Peltosyne, and species P. triassica Ponomarenko, 1977, together with the new species P. varyvrosa sp. nov. Two new monospecific genera, Gnathopeltos gen. nov. and Ofthalmopeltos gen. nov., with type species G. dixis sp. nov. and O. synkritos sp. nov., are also included in †Peltosynidae. Morphological characters evaluated with respect to their phylogenetic significance confirm that the family belongs to the suborder Polyphaga, mainly supported by the apomorphic internalized propleura. †Peltosynidae is characterized by a large transverse head, long and prominent, strongly developed mandibles, a short prosternum with a narrow, relatively short prosternal process, an interlocking mechanism between this process and a groove of the anteromedian process of the mesoventrite, striated elytra, a short meta...

Mesozoic fossils of longhorn beetles, leaf beetles and other Chrysomeloidea are extremely rare, and little is known about the early evolutionary history of this extraordinarily diverse superfamily of beetles. Here we report the earliest known fossil cerambycid, Cretoprionus liutiaogouensis gen. et sp. nov., from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China. C. liutiaogouensis bears several features characteristic of the extant subfamily Prioninae, including a large and robust body, absence of a stridulatory plate on the mesonotum, pseudotetramerous tarsi, mouthparts projecting forwards, and lateral carinae on the prothorax. It represents the only definite Mesozoic record of Cerambycidae, and extends the time of origin of the Prioninae as early as the Early Cretaceous. We incorporate two new calibration points as minimum constraints on the age of (1) Prioninae + Parandrinae and (2) Bruchinae using data from a recent molecular phylogenetic study of Chrysomeloidea, to reconstruct divergence times among the...