Palaeoentomologist Sandiso Mnguni and his team at Wits have discovered a fossil that delves into the evolutionary past of beetles, dating back ninety million years.
Research conducted by Genus Postdoctoral fellow Sandiso Mnguni and his team at Witwatersrand University not only identifies a new species of rove beetle, Paleothius mckayi, but also expands our knowledge of the evolutionary timeline of beetles, reaching back to the Cretaceous period – a time when dinosaurs flourished.
The findings, published in the Journal of Entomological Science, provide new insights into a fossil unearthed in Botswana’s Orapa Diamond Mine in the 1980s.
According to Mail&Guardian, the specimen was initially photographed and cataloged to showcase the diversity within the Orapa Diamond Mine deposit in the ’80s.
The fossil remained in the herbarium of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits University for over three decades until Mnguni stumbled upon it and proceeded to describe the specimen.
This specific fossil falls under the ‘staphylinine rove beetles’, a group not previously documented in fossil records from Africa or the Southern Hemisphere.
Mnguni explains that the sediment age in which these fossils were found corresponds to the period when dinosaurs thrived.
“We know this because the sediments from the deposits have been dated using isotopes that you find on the sediments, particularly those that are called zircons,” Mnguni stated in an article published in Daily Maverick.
“They’ve provided us with details on the sediments … and since the sediments are 90 million years old, it means the insects are of the same age. This confirms that they coexisted with dinosaurs since dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago,” he elaborated.
For a comprehensive account written by Mnguni, click here.
