At the dawn of the great rise: †Ponomarenkia belmonthensis (Insecta: Coleoptera), a remarkable new Late Permian beetle from the Southern Hemisphere

The first complete beetle body fossil from the Australian early Late Permian fossil site Belmont is described here, dagger Ponomarenkia belmonthensis sp. nov., attributed to a new extinct family dagger Ponomarenkiidae. Shortly before a dramatic biodiversity crisis at the end of the Palaeozoic, it documents profound transitions in the evolution of Coleoptera, today by far the most species-rich group of insects and the largest order of organisms. dagger Ponomarenkia displays transitional states of several important characters, excluding it from the ancestral earliest stem-group coleopterans (e.g. dagger Tshecardocoleidae), but also from the four modern' extant suborders. In contrast to dagger Tshecardocoleidae, dagger Permocupedidae and dagger Rhomboleidae, it lacks the ancestral very broad and apically truncated prosternal process and a broad prothoracic postcoxal bridge, features suggesting a position in Coleoptera sensu stricto, i.e. the crown group of beetles. However, it does not share apomorphic features with extant Archostemata (e.g. narrowed neck region), Polyphaga (e.g. internalized propleura), Adephaga (e.g. elongated metacoxae with strongly developed metacoxal plates) or Myxophaga (broadly separated mesocoxae). dagger Ponomarenkia likely belongs in the stem group of one of the extant suborders or in the stem group of a clade comprising more than one of them.http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:BEC74A0C-C902-4326-8549-7F5D5E99E0C3