Alienopterus brachyelytrus

Alienopterus is an extinct genus of insects from the Cretaceous period of Southeast Asia and East Asia. The type species A. brachyelytrus was described from the Burmese amber (Cenomanian) of Myanmar, while the other species A. imposter was described from the Jinju Formation (Albian) of South Korea. It was the first known member of the order Alienoptera until 2018, when the second and third members of the order, Caputoraptor elegans, and Alienopterella stigmatica were described. A. brachyelytrus has characters that are shared with cockroaches and mantids and is thought to represent either the sister taxon, or an ancestor to mantids.

Alienopterus brachyelytrus

Qohelet12 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AlienopterusPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At most 6.6 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 100.5 Mya and 93.9 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 1 occurrenceLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 1 occurrenceLate Cretaceous101–100 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences100–100 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences100–100 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences100–100 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences100–99 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences99–99 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences99–99 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences99–99 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences99–98 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences98–98 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences98–98 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences98–98 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences98–97 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences97–97 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences97–97 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences97–97 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences97–96 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences96–96 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences96–96 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences96–96 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences96–95 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences95–95 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences95–95 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences95–95 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences95–94 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences94–94 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences94–94 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences94–94 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences101 Mya93.4 Mya

1 occurrence of Alienopterus brachyelytrus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

1 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Alienopterus brachyelytrus and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Alienopterus brachyelytrus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

59 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Alienopterus brachyelytrus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Alienopterus brachyelytrus

Credit
Qohelet12
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Alienopterus brachyelytrus was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAlienopterus through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bai et al. 2016