Acanthognathus poinari is known from a solitary fossil insect which, along with six dipteran and a leaf section, is an inclusion in a transparent chunk of Dominican amber.[2] The amber was produced by the extinct Hymenaea protera, which formerly grew on Hispaniola, across northern South America and up to southern Mexico. The specimens were collected from an undetermined amber mine in fossil bearing rocks of the Cordillera Septentrional mountains, northern Dominican Republic.[1][3] The amber dates from at least the Burdigalian stage of the Miocene, based on studying the associated fossil foraminifera and may be as old as the Middle Eocene, based on the associated fossil coccoliths. This age range is due to the host rock being secondary deposits for the amber, and the Miocene the age range is only the youngest that it might be.[1]
The holotype amber specimen, number H-10-135, is currently preserved in the amber collections of noted amber researcher George Poinar Jr., which at the time of description were housed in the University of California, Berkeley. The fossil was first studied by entomologists Cesare Baroni Urbani and Maria L. De Andrade of the University of Basle with their 1994 type description of the new species being published in the journal Transactions of the American Entomological Society. The specific epithet poinari is a patronym honoring George Poinar for his enthusiasm for amber which interested the authors into study of the specimens.[2]
Prior to the species formal description in 1994 the known distribution of the genus was confined to tropical Central and South America, ranging from Honduras south to Northern Argentina and Southeastern Brazil. Member species are active predators which use highly enlarged and modified trap-jaw mandibles.[4]
