The new frog-legged beetle species, Pulchritudo attenboroughi, or Attenborough’s Beauty, was identified by Frank Krell, Denver Museum of Nature & Science Senior Curator of Entomology and Francesco Vitali, National Museum of Natural History of Luxembourg Invertebrate Zoology Collections Curator in August 2021. Credit: ©Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Phys.org has a story about a newly described fossil insect. The beetle, Pulchritudo attenboroughi, is named for Sir David Attenborough. The name means "Attenborough's Beauty". It was found in what is now Colorado in the famous Green River Formation. The full description of the insect appeared in a paper in the journal Papers in Paleontology.
A new frog-legged beetle species, Pulchritudo attenboroughi, or Attenborough's Beauty, was announced today in the scientific journal Papers in Palaeontology. Frank Krell, Denver Museum of Nature & Science Senior Curator of Entomology, and Francesco Vitali, National Museum of Natural History of Luxembourg Invertebrate Zoology Collections Curator, worked together to identify this new species.
The beetle, which has been on display in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's "Prehistoric Journey" exhibition since it opened in 1995, is from the Green River Formation in Garfield County, Colorado and lived nearly 49 million years ago. Its beautiful patterns on its wing casings caught Krell's eye.
"This is one of the most magnificent beetle fossils ever found," Krell said. "The patterning is preserved in unsurpassed clarity and contrast, making this one of the best-preserved beetle fossils. It is most definitely deserving of its name."
Beetles are sturdy when they are alive, but they do not easily fossilize as a whole beetle. They float on water, and when they sink and reach the sediment, they often fall apart. Usually, only single wing cases are found in the fossil record. Some deposits with a fine-grained sediment and particularly favourable conditions provide us with very well preserved, often almost complete fossils. These deposits are called lagerstätten. The Eocene Green River Formation in northwest Colorado is one of them.
