Protoligoneuria heloisae, a new mayfly from the Cretaceous of Brazil

[Halichoeres]

Meet †Protoligoneuria heloisae, a new mayfly from the Crato Formation of Lower Cretaceous Brazil. The new species (in an existing genus) honors Paula Heloísa Santana Resende, a doctoral student in paleontology who passed away this June. Mayflies are reasonably abundant in this formation, but most are naiads (the jargon for aquatic nymphs). Complete adults like this are special. The paper also includes an overview of the family (Ephemeroptera: †Hexaginitidae).

The holotype fossil:


And a faithful reconstruction by Aline Ghilardi:



Paper (paywall, but I'm trying to get a pdf; sci-hub doesn't seem to have it yet): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2021.1952196

Edit: one of the authors was kind enough to send me the pdf by email, so let me know if you'd like it.

[Dusty Wren]

What a gorgeous fossil. Thanks for posting this, @Halichoeres, it really is an amazing find. If you manage to lay hands on the paper at some point, I'd love to read it. I have a soft spot for mayflies.

[Newt]

The Crato is nuts. It's up there with Burgess, Green River, Jehol, and Solnhofen as a lagerstatte among lagerstatten.


I like the reconstruction but for one glaring flaw: there are only four mayflies. That is not a number mayflies come in. You either encounter zero mayflies or uncountable billions of mayflies. Realistically that background dinosaur should be collapsed on the ground, borne down by the sheer tonnage of ephemeropterans perched on it and suffocated by the mayflies clogging its nares and throat.

[Halichoeres]

What a gorgeous fossil. Thanks for posting this, @Halichoeres, it really is an amazing find. If you manage to lay hands on the paper at some point, I'd love to read it. I have a soft spot for mayflies.

I'll send it right away!

The Crato is nuts. It's up there with Burgess, Green River, Jehol, and Solnhofen as a lagerstatte among lagerstatten.


I like the reconstruction but for one glaring flaw: there are only four mayflies. That is not a number mayflies come in. You either encounter zero mayflies or uncountable billions of mayflies. Realistically that background dinosaur should be collapsed on the ground, borne down by the sheer tonnage of ephemeropterans perched on it and suffocated by the mayflies clogging its nares and throat.

Yeah, the Crato is incredible. I think it still has the earliest proper mushroom, Gondwanagaricites. Like, how good do you have to be to preserve a MUSHROOM?

I was about to retort that maybe this is the very beginning, the vanguard, of this emergence. But then this one would still be struggling out of its last nymphal molt. I guess tropical mayflies might be a little less all-at-once than temperate ones, but yeah, single digits is implausibly few!