Overview
- LMU researchers describe a new genus and species, Cretosabethes primaevus, from Late Cretaceous Kachin (Hukawng Valley) amber in Myanmar.
- The specimen is the first mosquito larva ever preserved in amber and the first immature mosquito known from the Mesozoic.
- Its morphology aligns with the Sabethini group that includes living species, contrasting with contemporaneous adults assigned to the extinct Burmaculicinae lineage.
- The fossil supports a Jurassic diversification of Culicidae and indicates remarkable conservation of larval form for roughly 100 million years.
- Preservation of the aquatic larva likely required resin to enter tiny water pools such as tree holes, underscoring the rarity of the find reported in Gondwana Research (2025).