Ozymandipteryx, Schall & Cao & Husemann, 2025

Schall, Ole-Kristian Odin, Cao, Chengquan & Husemann, Martin, 2025, New genera and species of Ripipterygidae (Orthoptera, Tridactyloidea) from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber, Contributions to Entomology 75 (2), pp. 253-262 : 253-262

Genus Ozymandipteryx gen. nov.

Type species.

Ozymandipteryx campana sp. nov.

Etymology.

Named after Ozymandias, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818) about the loss of greatness and forgetting of glory by the passing of time. It refers to the state of absent / very reduced metatarsi in the genus, which can be found in the modern-day Tridactylidae genera Ellipes Scudder, 1902 and Xya Latreille, 1809 , but is not present in any extant Ripipterygidae .

Diagnosis.

Absence or almost complete reduction of the metatarsus. Protibiae without dactyls. Mesotibiae not inflated. Cerci one-segmented, cylindrical, with long hairs. Forewing and hindwing present. Metafemur with two small apical protrusions. Dorsal metatibial ridge distally with slight serration. Apical spurs of metatibia much longer (4 ×) than subapical spurs.