Liassophyllum caii Gu & Ren, 2012

Gu, Jun-Jie, Yang, Xin, Huang, Rong, Yang, Guijun, Yue, Yanli & Ren, Dong, 2021, New species and material of Hagloidea (Insecta, Ensifera) from the Yanliao biota of China, ZooKeys 1033, pp. 183-190 : 183

Liassophyllum caii Gu & Ren, 2012 Fig. 2

Material examined.

CNU-ORT-NN2020001.

Locality and age.

Daohugou Village, Shantou Township, Ningcheng County, Inner Mongolia, China; Jiulongshan Formation, Bathonian-Callovian boundary interval ( Ren et al. 2019), Middle Jurassic.

Description of new material.

Isolated left forewing with negative and positive imprint; preserved length 41 mm, estimated complete length ca 49 mm, distal part of subcostal area, R, M, part of posterior margin all missing. Preserved forewing venation almost the same as previously described fossils of the species. Forewing elongated, not typically oval; the anterior wing margin is slightly flattened in its basal part, then arched upwards; there is no curved ScA crossing area between ScP and anterior wing margin; area between ScP and anterior margin basally narrowed, gradually widened to the middle; area between CuPb and CuPaβ broad, very basal cross-veins strongly curved and connected, formed into several irregular cells.

Discussion.

Although the distal part of the forewing is absent, we assign the new fossil to L. caii Gu & Ren, 2012 by the following: R is simple for a long distance and is strongly arched toward the anterior margin distal to the redirection of ScP; MA is undulate; and the area between R and MA is distinctly broad. Liassophyllum caii Gu & Ren, 2012 was erected based on 11 specimens. The holotype is an isolate forewing with the basal area between ScP and the anterior margin missing, the paratypes are well preserved but with wings strongly overlapped and their subcostal area is not clear. The basal part of the subcostal area of the type species L. abbreviatum Zeuner, 1935 is also unknown. The new material described here has a clear subcostal area, improving the knowledge of this important area. It lacks an arched ScA crossing the subcostal area positioned very close to the anterior wing margin. The basal-most area between ScP and anterior wing margin has fan-like veinlets. Zeuner (1939) and Gu et al. (2012a) attributed Liassophyllum to Cyrtophyllitinae , but Gorochov (1995) and Gorochov et al. (2006) excluded the genus from the subfamily, not mentioning its higher-rank assignment. The new material reported here supports exclusion of Liassophyllum from the Cyrtophyllitinae by its absence of an arched ScA crossing the area between ScP and the anterior margin. Further, the undulate MA, the long and more or less undulate stem of R, the very distal dichotomous R, and the broad and long area between CuPb and CuPaβ of Liassophyllum species strongly indicate that this genus belongs to the Tuphellidae .

Figures

Figure 2. Photo (A) and drawing (B) of Liassophyllum caii Gu & Ren, 2012, CNU-ORT-NN 2020001. Scale bar: 5 mm.