Tityus apozonalli
| Tityus apozonalli | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A fossil of the species in amber ( holotype ) |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Neogen (Mazantic Shale, Balumtum Sandstone) | ||||||||||||
| approx. 23 to approx. 3 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Tityus apozonalli | ||||||||||||
| Riquelme , Villegas & González , 2015 | ||||||||||||
Tityus apozonalli is an extinct scorpion species from the family of Buthidae . It was discovered as a fossil in an amber from Central America . The species is one of two found in Mexican amber . More species have been discovered in other Central American deposits.
Taxonomy
Tityus apozonalli was described on the basis of a single fossil, which was preserved as an inclusion in a transparent piece of Mexican amber. At the time of writing, the fossil belonged to the collection of the Museo del Ámbar de Chiapas in San Cristóbal de las Casas , Simojovel . The holotype is a fully adult male that was discovered in the Guadalupe Victoria deposit, in the municipality of Simojovel , Chiapas . The amber comes from the Neogene with an age between 23 million. and 15 million years. The Guadalupe Victoria deposit belongs to various geological formations , the outcrop that provided the scorpion fossil to the upper La Quinta formation ( Aquitanium ). The deposits come from a river near the coast. They reflect a mangrove ecosystem .
The holotype was examined by a team of researchers led by Francisco Riquelme from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos and published in the journal PLoS ONE in 2015 .
Naming
The species name was derived from the Nahuatl word "apozonalli", the Aztec word for amber (English sea bubble, sea foam).
T. apozonalli is one of two Tityus species found in Mexico. The second is called Tityus knodeli . In addition, three other species have been described in Dominican amber : Tityus azari , Tityus geratus and Tityus hartkorni .
features
T. apozonalli is reddish-brown in color. The pedipalp and legs have a pale yellow tone. The body is 17.8 mm long, the metasoma 9.3 mm. He has several eyes on the hump. Two smaller ocelli sit on the side of the middle hump. The chelicerae are 1.1 mm long. They have rows of teeth that stand in rows along the jaws and isolated Macrosetae on the underside. the enlarged pedipalps have raised ridges along the femur, patella, and the forceps . Trichobothria are present but are difficult to describe due to the conservation. Both the fixed and the moving parts of the forceps have rows of teeth in a slightly darker color. The underside of the mesosoma clearly shows the paired pectuses , each with twenty-nine teeth. On the back of the mesosoma, the male genitals are partially visible in the subtriangular operculum . The telson carries both a large venomous sting and a smaller subacular tubercle.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f F. Riquelme, G. Villegas-Guzmán, E. González-Santillán, V. Córdova-Tabares, OF Francke, D. Piedra-Jiménez, E. Estrada-Ruiz, B. Luna-Castro: New Fossil Scorpion from the Chiapas Amber deposit . In: PLoS ONE . 10, No. 8, 2015, pp. 1-20. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0133396 .
