The Meinertellidae are a small family of basal

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s belonging to the order

Archaeognatha The Archaeognatha are an order of apterygotes, known by various common names such as jumping bristletails. Among extant insect taxa they are some of the most evolutionarily primitive; they appeared in the Middle Devonian period at about the ...

. They are sometimes known as rock bristletails. These insects can be distinguished from members of the other Archaeognatha family,

Machilidae The Machilidae are a family of insects belonging to the order Archaeognatha (the bristletails). There are around 250 described species worldwide. These insects are wingless, elongated and more or less cylindrical with a distinctive humped thorax ...

, by the lack of scales at the base of the legs and antennae, head, and palps; along with possession of small abdominal

sternites The sternum (pl. "sterna") is the ventral portion of a segment of an arthropod thorax or abdomen. In insects, the sterna are usually single, large sclerites, and external. However, they can sometimes be divided in two or more, in which case the ...

protruding slightly between the coxal plates. They can also be distinguished by patches of reddish to violet-brown hypodermal pigment on the appendages. Meinertellidae currently contains more than 170 species over 19 genera, clustered into the following groups: ''Machiloides, Machilinus, Hypomachiloides, Machilontus,'' and ''Meinertellus''.

Distribution

These insects are principally found in the southern hemisphere, and can be found in rain forests, regular forests, and on coastal cliffs.

Taxonomy

* †'' Cretaceobrevibusantennis'' Chen and Su 2017

Burmese amber Burmese amber, also known as Burmite or Kachin amber, is amber from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar. The amber is dated to around 100 million years ago, during the latest Albian to earliest Cenomanian ages of the mid-Cretaceous period. The ...

, Myanmar, Cenomanian * †'' Cretaceomachilis'' Sturm and Poinar 1998

Lebanese amber Lebanese amber is fossilized resin found in Lebanon and southwest Syria. It dates back approximately 130-125 million years to the Barremian of the Early Cretaceous. It formed on what was then the northern coast of Gondwana, believed to be a tropi ...

Barremian The Barremian is an age in the geologic timescale (or a chronostratigraphic stage) between 129.4 ± 1.5 Ma (million years ago) and 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma). It is a subdivision of the Early Cretaceous Epoch (or Lower Cretaceous Series). It is precede ...

, Burmese amber, Myanmar, Cenomanian * †'' Glaesimeinertellus'' Sánchez-García et al. 2019 Lebanese amber, Barremian * '' Macropsontus'' Silvestri 1911 Lebanese amber, Barremian, Burmese amber, Myanmar, Cenomanian * '' Neomachilellus'' Wygodzinsky 1953 Neotropics, fossils known from Miocene Dominican and Chiapas ambers. * †'' Nullmeinertellus'' Zhang et al. 2018 Burmese amber, Myanmar, Cenomanian * †'' Unimeinertellus'' Zhang et al. 2018 Burmese amber, Myanmar, Cenomanian

References

Insect families Archaeognatha {{Archaeognatha-stub

Distribution

Taxonomy

See also

References