Plate Nº 30 · recorded November 10, 2026
Biology & EvolutionReported finding
Tiny beetle in 53-million-year-old amber named for Twenty One Pilots
Synchrotron imaging enabled the study of Cnopus twentyonepilotorum, a 53-million-year-old beetle and the first formally described puppet beetle from France's Oise amber.
By Priya Raman3 min read657 words
In brief
- A beetle preserved for about 53 million years was named Cnopus twentyonepilotorum.
- It is the first formally described puppet beetle from the lowermost Eocene Oise amber.
- The find places the Cnopus lineage in western Europe about 15 million years earlier than documented.
- Previously oldest Cnopus fossils came from Baltic and Bitterfeld ambers, dated to about 38 million and 34 million years ago.
- The description appeared in ZooKeys in 2026; its holotype is held in Paris.
Priya Raman
A beetle sealed in amber for about 53 million years has been named as a new species—the first formally described fossil member of its family from France’s Oise amber—pushing the lineage’s documented history back by roughly 15 million years.
The researchers named the species Cnopus twentyonepilotorum in honor of the band Twenty One Pilots. Their description and a review of the family’s fossil record appeared in the journal ZooKeys in 2026.
Puppet beetles, also called antlike leaf beetles, form the family Aderidae. About 1,000 living species occur on every continent except Antarctica. Researchers know little about their biology, and their fossil record remains sparse.
The Oise amber comes from Le Quesnoy near Creil in northern France. It ranks among Europe’s oldest ambers from the Cenozoic, the most recent geological era, and preserves fauna from a warm, humid forest in the lowermost Eocene, the earliest subdivision of the Eocene epoch.
Researchers based in Spain and France completed the study, led by Jules Ferreira, a Ph.D. candidate at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona (CSIC-CMCNB) and the Facultat de Ciències de la Terra at Universitat de Barcelona. Erich L. Spiessberger and David Peris joined him.
The team also worked with André Nel of the Institut de Systématique, Évolution, Biodiversité (ISYEB), a joint unit at Paris’s Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle involving CNRS, Sorbonne Université, EPHE and Université des Antilles. Alessandra Patera of the ALBA Synchrotron also contributed.
Ferreira described the gap in the family’s formal record:
“Aderidae had already been reported from this amber, but none had ever been formally described,” Ferreira said. “Our specimen offered the opportunity to fill this gap and to better understand the evolutionary history of the family.”
To examine the specimen without damaging the amber, the team used synchrotron X-ray microtomography, an imaging process that builds a three-dimensional model from X-ray images. The reconstructed model allowed the researchers to compare the fossil with living species.
The beetle belongs to Cnopus, a genus that still exists today. Its oldest previously known fossils came from the Baltic and Bitterfeld ambers, dated to roughly 38 million and 34 million years ago. The Oise specimen places this lineage in western European forests about 15 million years earlier than the earlier record had shown.
Some internal structures normally used to distinguish living species did not survive in the fossil. Researchers therefore cannot fully compare it with all its modern relatives. Its age, however, makes it very unlikely that the species remains alive today.
The study also found striking continuity in external morphology, meaning the insect’s overall outward body form.
“What surprised us most was how little the external morphology of this lineage has changed over time,” Ferreira said. “Despite more than 50 million years of evolution, major climatic changes and the transformation of European forests, the overall external morphology of these tiny beetles has remained remarkably stable.”
The species name honors Twenty One Pilots. The authors say the dedication recognizes the band’s contribution to raising awareness of mental health and reducing stigma around anxiety, depression and personal hardship.
Ferreira’s team is now studying other puppet beetles from the Oise amber. The researchers hope to determine which beetle groups persisted in European forests between the early and late Eocene.
Amber can preserve several organisms trapped together, providing rare snapshots of ancient ecological associations, or relationships among organisms. Each additional fossil can help researchers reconstruct how beetle communities formed and how those communities changed through time.
The name-bearing specimen, or holotype, is held in the paleontological collection of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris. The formal classification runs through Coleoptera, the beetle order; Tenebrionoidea, a superfamily; and Aderidae, the puppet-beetle family.
The 2026 ZooKeys paper has the digital object identifier (DOI) 10.3897/zookeys.1297.210120.
The Oise specimen now anchors the early history of Cnopus in western Europe.
via phys.org/rss-feed/ (Source)
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Senior reporter covering people, launches and day-to-day practice in general science news at SciBeat.
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