From Scent to Light: How Did Cretaceous Lampyroids Find Their Mates?

Around 100 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous, lush forests covered what is now Kachin State in northern Myanmar. Resin oozing from plants occasionally trapped small insects and eventually hardened into amber. Today, these pieces of amber offer rare glimpses of insect forms that vanished long ago from Mesozoic ecosystems. One specimen from the Hukawng Valley preserves an especially unusual male beetle. It possessed extraordinarily elaborate antennae and what appears to have been a light-producing organ on its abdomen. The beetle was named Icaroramus perisi and has been tentatively assigned to the extinct family Cretophengodidae. Its combination of highly developed olfactory structures and a photic organ provides an exceptional window into how early fireflies and their relatives may have communicated.

Reconstruction of Icaroramus perisi（Image source：Li YD et al. (2026)， CC BY 4.0 ）

Want to read more?

Subscribe to thesoundofevolution.com to keep reading this exclusive post.

Subscribe Now