Nanjing scholars have found the most complete fossil of "pseudo-Guo Gong Worm"

Guangming Daily Nanjing, September 14 (Reporter Zheng Jinming) Recently, huang Diying, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Cai Chenyang, a doctoral student, on the world's first fossil of "pseudo-Guo Gong Worm" were published in the international entomological journal European Journal of Entomology. This is the world's most complete fossil of "pseudo-Guo Gong Worm" found so far.

Mesozoic "pseudo-Guo Gong Worm" fossil (courtesy of Cai Chenyang)

This fossil of "pseudo-Guo Gong Worm" comes from Daohugou In Daohugou Village, Ningcheng County, Inner Mongolia, about 165 million years ago, and was collected and discovered by Huang Diying's team. This pseudo-Guo Gong insect is about 3 mm long and its true appearance can only be observed through a microscope. Morphologically, its head has a pair of compound eyes, a pair of monocular eyes, two antennae, each with 11 segments, the end is expanded by three segments, the anterior thorax dorsal edge is toothed, the abdomen has five segments, and a pair of elytra edges have shield-like edges. According to the study of the country of production, era and shield edge, the fossil of the "pseudo-Guo Gong Worm" was named the Chinese Jurassic Shield Edge Pseudo Guo Gong Worm. "It is judged that 165 million years ago, there was this kind of pseudo-Guo Gong insect living in the northeast region of China." Huang Diying said that today, the pseudo-Guo Gong insect, which resembles the fossil, only lives in South America and has long been extinct in China.

Cai Chenyang introduced that this Chinese Jurassic shield edge pseudo-Guo Gong insect fossil is the first known exact pseudo-Guo Gong Insect fossil, which not only advances the fossil record of the family by about 165 million years, but also has great significance for the study and analysis of polyphagous suborder beetles and even the entire Coleoptera insects.