2014/01/09 by Peter Vršanský, Danil Aristov · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior #Plant and animal studies #Fossil Insects in Amber #Biology #Longevity #Cretaceous #Paleontology #Zoology #Ecology #Genetics
paper · pdf · doi:10.14411/eje.2014.014
openalex publication_date 2014/01/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The earliest termite of the extant genus Mastotermes, is herein recorded in the Jurassic/Cretaceous (J/K) transitional beds of Chernovskie Kopi in Transbaikalian Russia along with Santonitermes of an uncertain family. These records represent the earliest eusocial organisms. No termites have ever been recorded among the hundreds of thousands of fossil insects in the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary Beds of China and Mongolia or in prior time periods. Both genera indicate that the early termites survived for an extremely long period of time. The present find both provides evidence of the greatest ghost range (60 Mya) of any winged stem cockroach family and indicates that the origin of termites and evolution of eusociality occurred later than the Middle Jurassic.