Alienopteridae

Alienopteridae Temporal range: Early Cretaceous-Eocene, Albian–Middle Eocene PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Aethiocarenus, a presumed alienopteran nymph
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Superfamily:	†Umenocoleoidea
Family:	†Alienopteridae Bai et al, 2016
Type genus
†Alienopterus Bai et al, 2016
Genera
†Aethiocarenus † †? †Alienopterus † †Caputoraptor † † † † † † †?
Synonyms
Aethiocarenidae

Alienopteridae is an extinct family of dictyopterans, known from the Mid-Cretaceous to Eocene. It was originally assigned to its own order Alienoptera by Bai et al., 2016. It was reassigned to the dictyopteran superfamily Umenocoleoidea as sister family to Umenocoleidae by Vršanský et al. (2018),^[1] and a more recent analysis similarly places Alienopteridae and Umenocoleidae as sister taxa within Dictyoptera, but placing both lineages outside of Blattodea.^[2] The majority of the alienopterid genera are known from the Cenomanian aged Burmese amber found in Myanmar;^{[3][4][5][1][6][7]} though an additional two genera ( and ) are from the Albian Crato Formation (Brazil), and the two youngest genera ( and ) are from the middle Eocene Green River Formation (Colorado, United States). Some taxa have been suggested as mimics of various hymenopterans, including bees and ants.^[1] However this was mostly rejected in another study.^[8] Some taxa were probably predators adapted to moving through dense foliage.^[8]

Genera[]

• Superfamily †Umenocoleoidea Chen & Tan, 1973
  • Family †Alienopteridae Bai et al., 2016
    • †Aethiocarenus Poinar & Brown, 2016
    • † Kočárek, 2018
    • † Mlynský et al.' 2018
    • †Alienopterus Bai et al. 2016
    • † Barna & Bigalk, 2018
    • †Caputoraptor Bai et al., 2018
    • † Barna, 2018
    • † Hinkelman, 2019
    • † Aristov, 2018
    • † Vršanský & Wang, 2018
    • † Vršanský et al., 2018
    • † Vršanský et al. 2018
    • † Sendi et al., 2020

An undescribed species is also known from the Turonian aged Orapa kimberlite pipe sediments in Botswana.^[1] The assignment of the genera Alienopterix and Vzrkadlenie to this group is disputed, as Luo, Xu & Jarzembowski (2020) transferred them to the family .^[9]

References[]

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