Euglossopteryx
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Euglossopteryx Temporal range: Middle Eocene |
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| E. biesmeijeri holotype | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Apidae |
| Genus: |
†Euglossopteryx Dehon & Engel, 2014 |
| Species: | †E. biesmeijeri |
| Binomial name | |
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Euglossopteryx biesmeijeri De Meulemeester, Michez, & Engel, 2014 |
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Euglossopteryx is an extinct genus of bee in the family Apidae known from a fossil found in North America. There is one described species in the genus, Euglossopteryx biesmeijeri.
Euglossopteryx biesmeijeri was described from a solitary fossil, which is a compression-impression fossil preserved in layers of soft sedimentary rock. Along with other well preserved insect fossils, the E. biesmeijeri specimen was collected from layers of the Middle Eocene Parachute Creek Member of the Green River Formation. The formation is a group of Late Paleocene to Late Eocene depositional basins in Wyoming and Utah. The Parachute Creek Member is a composed of oil shales from a shallow mountain lake that exists for around 20 million years. Study of the paleoflora preserved in the shales indicates the lake was around 1,500–2,900 metres (4,900–9,500 ft) in elevation surrounded by a tropical to subtropical environment that had a distinct dry season.
At the time of study, the holotype was part of the Division of Entomology (Paleoentomology) collections, University of Kansas Natural History Museum. It was first studied by an international team of researchers headed by Manuel Dehon of the University of Mons, Belgium, with the teams 2014 type description of the genus and species was published in the natural sciences journal PLOS One. The genus name is a derived from a combination of the Euglossini type genus Euglossa combined with the Greek "pteryx" meaning wing. This is a reference to the similarity between Euglossopteryx biesmeijeri and species of Euglossa. The specific epithet biesmeijeri was coined as a patronym honoring the Belgian melittologist Jacobus Biesmeijer, who is a noted researcher of pollinator-plant interactions and pollinator declines.
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