''Cascoplecia insolitis'', rarely known as the unicorn fly,
is an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
dipteran that lived in the
Early Cretaceous
The Early Cretaceous ( geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma.
Geology
Pro ...
. The
type specimen
In biology, a type is a particular wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to a ...
was found in
Burmese amber.
George Poinar Jr.
George O. Poinar Jr. (born April 25, 1936) is an American entomologist and writer. He is known for popularizing the idea of extracting DNA from insects fossilized in amber, an idea which received widespread attention when adapted by Michael Cr ...
, who described the fossil, placed the genus into a new family Cascopleciidae. One of the defining characteristics of ''Cascoplecia'' is the presence of three ocelli raised on an extended, horn-like protuberance. The distinctiveness of the family was questioned by other authors, and the genus has been subsequently transferred to the family
Bibionidae
Bibionidae (March flies) is a family of flies (Diptera) containing approximately 650–700 species worldwide. Adults are nectar feeders and emerge in numbers in spring. Because of the likelihood of adults flies being found ''in copula'', they h ...
.
[Thomas Pape, Vladimir Blagoderov & Mikhail B. Mostovski. 201]
Order DIPTERA Linnaeus, 1758.
In: Zhang, Z.-Q. (Ed.) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness.
left, reconstruction
References
Bibionomorpha genera
Fossil taxa described in 2010
Cretaceous insects of Asia
Burmese amber
Fossils of Myanmar
†
Taxa named by George Poinar Jr.
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