The monospecific family Mysteriomorphidae was recently described based on two fossil specimens from the Late Cretaceous Kachin amber of northern Myanmar. The family was placed in Elateriformia incertae sedis without a clear list of characters that define it either in Elateroidea or in Byrrhoidea. We report here four additional adult specimens of the same lineage, one of which was described using a successful reconstruction from a CT-scan analysis to better observe some characters. The new specimens enabled us to considerably improve the diagnosis of Mysteriomorphidae. The family is definitively placed in Elateroidea, and we hypothesize its close relationship with Elateridae. Similarly, there are other fossil families of beetles that are exclusively described from Cretaceous ambers. These lineages may have been evolutionarily replaced by the ecological revolution launched by angiosperms that introduced new co-associations with taxa. These data indicate a macroevolutionary pattern of replacement that could be extended to other insect groups.

College of Life Sciences Capital Normal University Beijing 100048 China

Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra i de l'Oceà and Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat Facultat de Geologia Universitat de Barcelona 08028 Barcelona Spain

Department of Entomology and Behavior Ecology Evolution and Systematics Program University of Maryland College Park MD 20742 USA

Department of Paleobiology National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution Washington DC 20013 USA

Department of Zoology Faculty of Science Palacky University 77900 Olomouc Czech Republic

Institute of Geosciences University of Bonn 53115 Bonn Germany

Montana Entomology Collection Montana State University Bozeman MT 59717 USA

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