Agulla mineralensis
species of insect (fossil)
Agulla mineralensis is an extinct species of snakefly in the raphidiid genus Agulla. The species is solely known from the Middle Miocene, late Bartovian stage, Pacific Union Site in the Stewart Valley Group, Mineral County, Nevada.
History and classification
Agulla mineralensis is known only from one fossil, the holotype, specimen number 539. The specimen is composed of a complete specimen of an isolated hind-wing which is preserved as a compression fossil in sedimentary paper shale. The fossil was recovered from outcrops of the Stewart Valley group shales at the Pacific Union site, BLM locality #26-30-09-335, in Mineral County, Nevada, USA. A. mineralensis was first studied by Michael S. Engel of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA. His 2009 type description of the new species was published in the journal Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science. Engel coined the specific epithet mineralensis in honor of Mineral County, where the species was found. At the time of the species description, Agulla mineralensis was the only member of the order Raphidioptera to be found in Neogene aged fossil deposits in North America.
Description
The lone specimen of Agulla mineralensis is approximately 10.9 millimetres (0.43 in) in length and a maximum of 3.8 millimetres (0.15 in) in width. The presence of distinct M and Cu veins in the very basal section of the wing denotes the wing is a hind-wing. The wing is apparently hyaline in coloration with a slight darkening of the pterostigma area.
“Agulla mineralensis” enters the record as species of insect (fossil). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Agulla, mineralensis and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Agulla mineralensis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.