Longest-surviving Carboniferous-family insect found in Mesozoic amber

The major lineages of winged insects originated in the Carboniferous and most extant families stemmed 150 Ma later. Until now, no family from the Carboniferous was represented by a living species or by amber fossils, leaving a significant gap in our knowledge of early insects. Here, we report new phyloblattid cockroaches, previously known mainly from the Carboniferous, including an amber fossil with outstanding 3D preservation from around 100 Ma. They represent the longest-lasting cockroach lineage and offer an unprecedented window into the Palaeozoic evolution. Specimens from Cretaceous amber and from Permian sediments represent a new genus, revealing a singular example of persistent morphology among the fast-evolving cockroaches. Together with two new taxa from the intertrappean sediments of Russia, these confirm that this family survived the Permo-Triassic extinction and persisted 213 Ma, longer than any known (Carboniferous) insect family. The new fossils share characters with the two main lineages of living cockroaches, as well as mantises and termites, thus clarifying their divergence from Phyloblattidae or direcly descendant Liberiblattinidae.