Anthracoblattina Mendesi Pinto Et Sedor (Blattodea, Phyloblattidae): The most completely preserved South American Palaeozoic cockroach

Abstract

© 2016 by the Sociedade Brasileira de Paleontologia.An abundant and diverse fossil record, encompassing some specimens with exceptional preservation, identifies the Campáleo outcrop in the earliest Permian marine Lontras Shale of the Paraná Basin, in the northern uplands of State of Santa Catarina, Brazil as a Carboniferous-Permian fossillagerstätte. Among others, a relatively rich entomofauna was recently discovered in pyrite-rich black shales, yielding several exceptionally preserved, partly pyritized, body fossils of ‘cockroachoid’ (Blattodea) insects. Some of these were identified as Anthracoblattina mendesi Pinto & Sedor, which is revised here in a preliminary comparison with all Palaeozoic related species known thus far from South America. Based on these new finds, A. mendesi becomes the most complete Palaeozoic blattoid described so far from South America. Several sub-complete individuals provide additional information about the anatomy of Late Palaeozoic blattoids, in general. The new finds demonstrate that the genus Anthracoblattina is not only a common and typical component of the Euramerican Late Pennsylvanian/early Permian entomofauna, but was also present in the South American Gondwana entomofauna. It is hypothesized that Anthracoblattina immigrated from Euramerica into this part of Gondwana during a climate amelioration event during the course of the Late Paleozoic Ice Age (LPIA), as it is indicated by the transgressive marine Lontras Shale.