Pseudarmadillo cristatus

Pseudarmadillo cristatus is an extinct species of isopod (woodlouse) in the family Delatorreidae known from a series of possibly Miocene fossils found on Hispaniola. At the time of description P. cristatus was one of two Pseudarmadillo species known from the fossil record and one of only two from Hispaniola.

Pseudarmadillo cristatus is known from ten isopods of various developmental stages and both female and male all of which are inclusions in five different transparent chunks of Dominican amber. Six of the paratypes are in the same amber specimen as a spider, a mite, and a myrmicine ant, while the two juvenile paratypes are in a single amber also. The amber specimens which entomb the holotype and paratypes, are currently preserved in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology collections at the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany. The type specimens were collected from an undetermined amber mine, in fossil bearing rocks of the Cordillera Septentrional mountains, northern Dominican Republic. The amber was produced by the extinct Hymenaea protera, which formerly grew on Hispaniola, across northern South America and up to southern Mexico. 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.