Gryllobencain, Haug, Joachim T., Hörnig, Marie K., Kiesmüller, Christine, Pazinato, Paula G., Baranov, Viktor & Haug, Carolin, 2022

Haug, Joachim T., Hörnig, Marie K., Kiesmüller, Christine, Pazinato, Paula G., Baranov, Viktor & Haug, Carolin, 2022, A 100 - million-year-old ensiferan with unusual mouthparts and comments on the evolution of raptorial appendages within Polyneoptera, Geodiversitas 44 (4), pp. 57-73 : 59-60

Gryllobencain n. gen.

urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:BF978806-B42C-489E-BAE2-306DAC00B8B5

TYPE SPECIES. — Gryllobencain patrickmuelleri n. sp.

DERIVATIO NOMINIS. — ‘Gryllo’forcricket;‘ben’isHebrewfor‘sonof’and provides connection to the next part of the name;‘cain’ for the biblical figure. According to some legends,the children of Cain became the vampires.The name hence means ‘vampire cricket’ in reference to the prominent sickleshaped proximal parts of the maxilla,distantly reminding of vampire teeth.

DIAGNOSIS. — As for the species.

REMARK

The current version of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature demands that a newly described species is assigned to a genus. Due to the uncertainty of relationship and the apparent unique combination of characters of the new fossils we cannot assign them to any known genus. We therefore must erect a new one. While it is in principle possible to avoid creating this factually unnecessary additional category and we generally support the idea to not erect a new genus in such a case, we here provide a classical approach for the convenience of readers used to this approach. We still want to point out that the uncertainty concerning relationship could much better be expressed with the combination of the next higher group (in this case ‘ Ensifera patrickmuelleri ’, see for this approach discussion in Haug & Haug 2016 and references therein; Wagner et al. 2019).