Blapsium
Extinct genus of beetles
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Blapsium is an extinct genus of beetles from the Middle Jurassic of England.[1][2] The only described species is B. egertoni, which was first described by John O. Westwood in 1854.[3] The species is known from a single specimen found by the Earl of Enniskillen in the Stonesfield Slate, now known as part of the Taynton Limestone Formation,[4] which Sir Philip Egerton then passed to Westwood for description.[3] The specimen is deposited in the Natural History Museum, London. It is incompletely preserved, lacking a head, pronotum and legs. It has a broad, convex body. It has a very short metathorax, which suggests that it was possibly apterous.[1][5]
| Blapsium Temporal range: Middle Jurassic, | |
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| John O. Westwood's figure of Blapsium egertoni | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Coleoptera |
| Family: | Ommatidae |
| Genus: | †Blapsium Westwood, 1854 |
| Species: | †B. egertoni |
| Binomial name | |
| †Blapsium egertoni Westwood, 1854 | |
| Synonyms | |
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In his original description of the genus, Westwood compared Blapsium to the darkling beetles and ground beetles.[3] Ponomarenko (2006) redescribed the holotype of B. egertoni and referred it to the tribe Notocupedini in the family Ommatidae (considered in the paper to be a subfamily of Cupedidae), which was followed by Kirejtshuk (2020).[1][5]
