The Insect Oviposition Firstly Discovered on the Middle Jurassic Ginkgoales Leaf from Inner Mongolia, China

Although the evidence of insect oviposition on plant organs has been reported from the late Paleozoic to the Miocene, record from the middle Jurassic is still blank. This paper reports a significant evidence of insect oviposition on plant leaf from the middle Jurassic for the first time. The ovipositional scar is distributed on the abaxial surface of Sphenobaiera leaf(Ginkgoales) from the middle Jurassic Daohugou Formation of Inner Mongolia, China. A new ichnospecies Paleoovoidus venustus sp. nov. is described. The scar is elliptic to oval, arranged in longitudinal rows between leaf veins with almost regular distance, with its long axis paralleling to the leaf venation. This discovery adds new information to the morphology of insect endophytic oviposition probably produced by Odonata existed in a terrestrial ecosystem ~165 Ma ago. The new materials also provide important data for the study of insect reproductive biology, plant-insect interaction and coevolution, as well as understanding the paleoclimate and palaeoenvironment during that time in northeast China.