Lacewing

We recently proposed a new genus of Thorny Lacewing (Insecta, Neuroptera, Rhachiberothidae) from the Eocene amber of France.

The family Rachiberothidae has been of considerable controversy and has been considered at different times during its history as a subfamily of Berothidae (Tjeder, 1959), or even of Mantispidae (Willmann, 1990b, 1004b). The "thorny lacewings" generally resemble other berothids except in the raptorial forelegs, which are convergent with those of the mantispids. While thorny lacewings are today confined to sub-Saharan Africa (U. Aspock and Mansell, 1994; U. Aspöck and H. Aspöck, 1997), they were clearly distributed throughout the world in the Cretaceous and perhaps into the Tertiary as well, disappearing from other regions apparently during the Eocene-Oligocene transition.

As an extinct clade, many species of the saucrosmylids were erected just based on a single fore- or hindwing, and it should be realized that providing more stable characters is necessary when describing new lacewing taxa just based on an isolated hindwing.