Life cycles of parasites, particularly those with complex life histories and developmental pathways, are rarely preserved as fossils in total.1 The evidence is almost universally biased toward incomplete perspectives derived from a single sex or life stage.2,3 Here, we report a piece of Cretaceous Burmese amber that contains 28 males, a larviform female, and two longipede larvae of the wedge-shaped beetle Paleoripiphorus, and its potential cockroach host. Collectively, this fossil represents the complete series of free-living stages (except of the last larval instar) for a 99-million-year-old parasitoid insect from Myanmar (Figure 1 and Supplemental Information). The wedge-shaped beetles (Ripiphoridae) are of special interest among parasitoids because of their obligatory, protelean development in larvae of cockroaches, beetles, bees and wasps.4.

Department of Zoology Faculty of Science Charles University Viničná 7 CZ 128 00 Praha 2 Czech Republic

Division of Entomology Natural History Museum 1501 Crestline Drive Suite 140 University of Kansas Lawrence KS 66045 4415 USA; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Kansas Lawrence KS 66045 USA

References provided by Crossref.org

The earliest beetle with mouthparts specialized for feeding on nectar is a parasitoid of mid-Cretaceous Hymenoptera