Zoosystema
47 (9) - Pages 133-138The earliest known fossil of the chinch bug family Blissidae Stål, 1862 is described and figured from a macropterous male preserved in mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber of northern Myanmar. Prosthoblissus primigenius n. gen., n. sp. is noteworthy for the putatively plesiomorphic retention of open procoxal cavities, a character state shared with a swath of arguable early-diverging extant genera. It is distinguished from those genera based on a unique combination of plesiomorphic and apomorphic character states, as well as from Eoblissus gallicus Garrouste, Schubnel & Nel, 2019, the prior earliest fossil of the family. This occurrence extends the age of the family from the early Eocene to the middle Cretaceous, greatly revising available calibration points for crown-group Blissidae.