Alegorius undetermined

Fikáček, Martin, Prokin, Alexander, Yan, Evgeny, Yue, Yanli, Wang, Bo, Ren, Dong & Beattie, Robert, 2014, Modern hydrophilid clades present and widespread in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous (Coleoptera: Hydrophiloidea: Hydrophilidae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 170 (4), pp. 710-734 : 717-718

ALEGORIUS SP.

Material examined: CNU 2009081, piece only, from the same locality as A. yixianus sp. nov.

Description: Body elongate oval; for measurements see Table 1.

Head with distinct frontoclypeal suture reaching lateral margin closely before eyes; clypeus large, probably weakly excised anteriorly; eyes rather large in dorsal view; labrum transverse partly exposed anterior to clypeus.

Prothorax. Pronotum transverse, narrowing anteriad, anterolateral corners slightly projecting anteriad, lateral margins arcuate.

Mesothorax. Anapleural sutures strongly curved, widely separate and subparallel anteriorly. Elytra with coarsely punctate longitudinal series; epipleuron rather narrow anteriorly.

Metathorax. Metaventrite slightly longer than mesoventrite; metanepisternum c. 3.5× as long as wide.

Abdomen with five ventrites, ventrite 1 with deep and narrow apical emargination.

Legs rather long, mesotibiae reaching c. the body outline, mesotibia slightly shorter than mesotibia.

Comments: Although the fossil is rather badly preserved, it bears diagnostic characters of Alegorius (shallowly excised clypeus, strongly curved anapleural and abdominal ventrite 5 with apical emargination) and corresponds to A. yixianus sp. nov. in general body shape. In contrast to the above species, it is much smaller (6.4 mm) and therefore represents another species. Due to the poor preservation of the fossil, we refrain from naming the fossil here, pending the discovery of better-preserved specimens.