Tityus apozonalli
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Tityus apozonalli Temporal range: Early – Middle Miocene |
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| T. apozonalli holotype | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Subphylum: | Chelicerata |
| Class: | Arachnida |
| Order: | Scorpiones |
| Family: | Buthidae |
| Genus: | Tityus |
| Species: | T. apozonalli |
| Binomial name | |
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Tityus apozonalli Riquelme, Villegas, & González, 2015 |
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Tityus apozonalli is an extinct species of scorpion in the family Buthidae known from a fossil found in North America. The species is one of two scorpions described from Mexican amber and one of seven species from Central American amber deposits.
Tityus apozonalli was described from a solitary fossil, which is preserved as an inclusion in a transparent chunk of Mexican amber. At the time of description, the amber specimen was housed in the fossil collection of the Museo del Ámbar de Chiapas in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Simojovel. The holotype fossil is composed of a very complete adult male recovered from the Guadalupe Victoria site. Mexican amber is recovered from fossil bearing rocks in the Simojovel region of Chiapas, Mexico. The amber dates from between 23 million years old at the oldest and 15 million years at the youngest. The Guadalupe Victoria site is an outcrop of amber bearing strata belonging to the Mazantic Shale and Balumtum Sandstone. The deposits preserve a transitional river or stream environments near the coast and preserves fossils of a mangrove forest ecosystem.
The holotype was first studied by a team of researchers headed by Francisco Riquelme of the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos with their 2015 type description of the species being published in the natural sciences journal PLoS ONE. The specific epithet apozonalli was derived from the Náhuatl word "apozonalli", coined by the Aztecs for amber, and translating as sea bubble or foam.
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