First female of Eomeropidae (Mecoptera) from Kachin amber sheds light on morphology and environmental preferences of eomeropids in the Cretaceous

Family Eomeropidae is a relict and species-poor family of scorpionflies (Mecoptera), encompassing 16 species within seven genera. Although this family was more diverse in the past, with nine species known from the Mesozoic and six from the Cenozoic (Cockerell, 1909; Ponomarenko & Rasnitsyn, 1974; Archibald et al., 2005; Ren & Shih, 2005; Zhang et al., 2011; Soszyńska-Maj et al., 2016; Archibald & Rasnitsyn, 2018; Bashkuev & Jarzembowski, 2023), only one extant species exists today: Notiothauma reedi MacLachlan, 1877, found in the rainforests of southwestern Chile (Table 1). Notably, this species does not exhibit the typical appearance of a scorpionfly; rather, it resembles a cockroach, with a flattened body, with dense venation on heavily sclerotized wings, and robust, spined legs adapted for ground-dwelling activities such as burrowing in soil, litter, and beneath bark. An apomorphy of the wing venation in this species is the close proximity of the radial vein bifurcation and the medial vein, termed the ‘eomeropid triadic branch’.