CRETACEOUS WEEVILS FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA, WITH DESCRIPTION OF A NEW GENUS AND SPECIES AND PHYLOGENETIC AND ZOOGEOGRAPHICAL COMMENTS (COLEOPTERA, CURCULIONOIDEA)

The mid-Cretaceous weevil fossils from the Orapa Diamond Mine in Botsw ana are studied, and a new genus and species, Orapaeus cretaceus Kusch el & Oberprieler, is described. This fossil genus is placed in the tri be Eurhynchini of Brentidae and compared with the two extant genera of the tribe. With the discovery of Orapaeus, the family Brentidae can, for the first time, be traced back to Cretaceous times, and there is e vidence that the brentid subfamilies and perhaps also the tribes were already differentiated by the Middle Cretaceous. By contrast, the mode rn families of angiosperm plants were evidently not yet established by then. In consideration of the palaeoflora of Orapa, it is concluded t hat the environment probably was tropical and the area well vegetated, but that no clues are present as to the likely hostplant(s) of Orapae us. The differences between Orapaeus and the extant Eurhynchini sugges t that the fossil insect fauna of Orapa is generally assignable to ext inct forms, and these differences do not support a hypothesis of prolo nged evolutionary stasis.