Sepulcidae

Sepulcidae
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Sepulcidae
Rasnitsyn, 1968
Genera
  • Sepulca
  • Sepulenia
  • Prosyntexis

Sepulcidae is a family of extinct hymenopteran insects. The family is known primarily from late Mesozoic fossils found in 1968 in Transbaikalia. The insects were distant relatives of modern sawflies.

The first genus, Sepulca was identified by Alexandr Pavlovich Rasnitsyn. It was named by his colleague and a science-fiction author Kirill Eskov after fictional entities called sepulki, found in Stanisław Lem's The Star Diaries and Observation on the Spot.[1] The relation to Lem's sepulki is understandable in both Polish and Russian, but their English translation obscures their association with ancient insects as they are translated as Scrupts in English editions of Lem's novels.[2]

The genus included three species, as well as a number of sub-species:[3]

References

  1. ↑ (Russian) Каракоз Роман. Где живут сепульки: [О двух видах палеонтологических перепончатокрылых — Sepulka mirabilis и Sepulenia syricta] // Новая интересная газета (Киев). — 2004. — № 1. — С. 5. — (Блок Z: Просто фантастика). Аннотация
  2. ↑ http://english.lem.pl/faq#scrupts
  3. ↑ (Russian) Rasnitsyn A.P. Sepulcidae and origin of Cephidae (Hymenoptera: Cephoidea). In: Tobias V.I. (ed.). Taxonomy of insects and mites. Trans. All-Union Entomol. Soc. Nauka Press, Moscow. 1988. 70: 480-497
  4. ↑ Martins-Neto R. G., Melo A. C., Prezoto F., 2007. A new species of wasp (Syphyta, Sepulcidae) from the Santana formation (lower Cretaceous, Northeast Brazil). J. Ent. Res. Soc. 9(1):1-6
  5. ↑ Alexandr Rasnitsyn, Jörg Ansorge. New Early Cretaceous hymenopterous insects (Insecta: Hymenoptera) from Sierra del Montsec (Spain). „Paläontologische Zeitschrift". 74 (3), ss. 335-341, 2000-12. doi:10.1007/BF02988105
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