Coprinites

Coprinites is an extinct monotypic genus of gilled fungus in the Agaricales family Agaricaceae. At present it contains the single species Coprinites dominicana.

The genus is solely known from the early Miocene, Burdigalian stage, Dominican amber deposits on the island of Hispaniola.Coprinites is one of only four known agarics fungus species known in the fossil record and the first of three to be described from Dominican amber.

The genus is known only from the single holotype "AF-9-11", a single fruiting body, mushroom, specimen currently residing in the Poinar collections maintained by the University of California, Berkeley. The specimen was collected from the La Toca amber mine, northeast of Santiago de los Caballeros, in the Cordillera Septentrional area of the Dominican Republic. It was first studied by Dr. George Poinar of the UC, Berkeley and Dr. Rolf Singer from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. Poinar and Singer published their 1990 type description in the journal Science. The generic epithet Coprinites is in reference to the genus similarity to the modern genus Coprinus. The specific epithet "dominicana" was coined by the authors in reference to the Dominican Republic where the fossil was recovered.