Scientists have restored the appearance of the Permian beetle

The Australian beetle Ponomarenkia belmonthensis with a length of only 1.5 centimeters is surprising entomologists and paleontologists. The fact is that he lived in Australia 300 million years ago and poses new questions for scientists about how insects arose. Recently, it was possible to reconstruct the appearance of this beetle - even before the advent of the dinosaurs.

Style: Retro Futurism

The discovery of the beetle of the late Permian period, when even dinosaurs were not yet there, launches a new round in the development of theories about the appearance of this group of insects. Reconstruction was carried out on two fossilized specimens of a beetle in a former swamp in Belmonte, Australia.

As the scientists themselves say, beetles, of which there are almost 400 thousand species today (i.e., a third of all living organisms), are still poorly studied in the Permian period. The fossils known so far belonged to the ancestors of modern beetles, which mainly lived under the bark of conifers. They possessed a series of primitive characteristics: their elytra were not yet completely hardened, and the surface of the body was covered with frequent small tubercles.

Old people do not belong here

Since the new species of beetles combines ancient and modern characteristics, it does not fit into any of the four suborders of beetles that exist today. He demonstrates that the first major changes in the evolution of beetles occurred before the mass extinction at the border of the Permian and Triassic periods, which brought dinosaurs to the scene.

Beetles survived this dramatic event, which brought with it the acidification of the seas and large volcanic eruptions, much better than most other groups of organisms. Apparently, they were helped by a land-based lifestyle and a hardened exoskeleton. However, Ponomarenkia belmonthensis could not survive these cataclysms, since in the Mesozoic era there are no traces of their existence.