A101 DR9106 Beautiful Rare Earwig Dominican Amber $1 (06/28/2009)...

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A101 DR9106 Beautiful Rare Earwig Dominican Amber $1.01

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A101 DR9106 Beautiful Rare Earwig Dominican Amber $1.01

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Sold Date: 06/28/2009
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Advertising

a rare Earwig (Dermaptera) nicely preserved and nicely displayed
in a beautiful authentic Dominican Amber Gemstone
excavated in the La Toca amber mine
DR9106
$1.01 No Reserve

a rare Earwig (Dermaptera) nicely preserved and nicely displayed
in a beautiful authentic Dominican Amber Gemstone
excavated in the La Toca amber mine
DR9106
$1.01 No Reserve Some photos of our amber excavations in August 2007 at La Toca and La Bucara amber mines

Description
This is a rare Earwig (Dermaptera) nicely preserved and nicely displayed in a beautiful authentic Dominican Amber Gemstone excavated in the La Toca amber mine.
DR9106
$1.01 No Reserve
Earwigs are fairly rare in all ambers, they are nocturnal, spending the day in debris under bark and in other protected areas, they are primarily plant feeders or scavengers. Some species when disturbed eject a foul smelling liquid from glands near the base of the abdomen, this serves as a means of protection. The name "earwig" comes from an old superstition that these insects get into people's ears, this belief is without foundation. The pincer like cerci are used in defense and can sometimes inflict a painful pinch. The following is from Grimaldi, Engel and Nascimbene Novitates 3361 March 2002 Fossiliferous Cretaceous Amber from Myanmar (Burma): Its Rediscovery, Biotic Diversity, and Paleontological Significance

" Like the Zoraptera and Embiidina, the earwigs(Dermaptera) are an autapomorphic, isolated order of Polyneoptera. Their true phylogenetic position remains obscured, but it is for just such lineages that early fossils will prove most critical for elucidating relationships. To date, no such analysis incorporating information from extinct groups has been undertaken, although Haas (1995) has evaluated various character systems for Dermaptera phylogeny. Numerous compression fossils of earwigs have been described from deposits ranging in age from the Lower Jurassic to the Miocene (e.g., Whalley, 1985; Ping, 1935; Vishniakova, 1980; Popham, 1990; Carpenter, 1992, Zhang, 1994). Three undescribed and putatively Dermaptera elytra from the Upper Triassic of Australia occur in the NHML collections (A.J. Ross, personal commun.). Several Cenozoic amber fossils from Eocene Baltic amber (Burr, 1911) have been described, and ones also occur in Miocene Dominican amber (Schlee, 1980; AMNH and NHML collections). Several compression fossil species from the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous of Asia were placed in an extinct suborder, the †Archidermaptera, which plesiomorphically have segmented cerci, pentamerous tarsi, and retain venation (albeit reduced) on their tegmina (Bey-Bienko, 1936; Carpenter, 1992). All other fossils are of the suborder Forficulina (sometimes referred to as the ‘‘true earwigs’’), with the typical synapomorphies of reduced tarsi, un segmented cerci, and veinless tegmina,
among other characters. Four specimens of Forficulina are known from Cretaceous amber, two unstudied ones in Lebanese amber and two in Burmese amber. The first Burmese amber specimen known is the holotype of Labidura electrina Cockerell (NHML In. 20146; Ross and York, 2000: fig. 2); the second is an adult female pygidicranoid in the AMNH collection (Bu274: fig. 22b). The NHML specimen is not well preserved and its assignment to the living genus Labidura may be incorrect, as suspected by Cockerell (1920), owing to an
apparent unbent pygidium, though it may be labidurid of some sort. The AMNH specimen is remarkably well preserved, easily recognizable as a pygidicranoid and distinct from Cockerell’s species. Interestingly, the Pygidicranoidea is the basalmost superfamily of the suborder Forficulina (Haas, 1995). The other two living suborders are Hemimerina and Arixeniina and are, not surprisingly, unknown from the fossil record. Both are ectoparasitic on mammals, the Arixeniina on molossid bats in southeast Asia, and Hemimerina on certain rodents in Africa. At lea...