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| Sub-order
Ditrysia;
Obtectomera |
| Superfamily
Papilionoidea |
| Family Papilionidae |
| Sub-family
Baroniinae
(1 species) |
| Baronia brevicornis
(Salvin, 1893) very small area
of Mexico, |
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Baronia
brevicornis, commonly known as the
short-horned baronia, is a species of
butterfly in the monotypic genus Baronia
and is placed in a subfamily of its own,
the Baroniinae, a sister group of the
remainder of the swallowtail butterflies.
It is endemic to a very small area of
Mexico, where the distribution is patchy
and restricted.
The genus is named after Oscar Theodor
Baron who collected the first specimen in
the Sierra Madre region of Mexico. The
species was then described by Salvin.
Morphological characteristics include an
abdominal scent organ in females.
Baronia is unique among swallowtail
butterflies or their relatives in having
an Acacia species, Vachellia
campeachiana (synonym Acacia
cochliacantha, family Leguminosae) as its larval
food plant.Living
Fossils
Bio
Science: Living
Fossils: On Lampreys, Baronia,
and the Search for Medicinals
Thomas Eisner, 3,
March 2003.
“Living
fossils” are organisms that, while
still resembling their extinct
progenitors in fundamental ways, have
escaped the fate of these ancestors by
specializing in ways that gave them an
edge in survival.........
|
Praepapilio
is an extinct genus of swallowtail
butterfly from the middle Eocene
deposits of Colorado, United States,
comparable to the Lutetian epoch in age.
The genus is considered to be the only
representative of the fossil subfamily Praepapilioninae.
Praepapilio
is, so far, the only wholly extinct
subtaxon known within the swallowtail
family. Two species have been described,
each from a single fossil find. |
| Praepapilio colorado
(Durden & Rose, 1978) Fossil from
Colorado |
| The holotype of P.
colorado, the type
species of the genus, is from the Middle Eocene-aged
Green River Shale, Parachute Creek
Member, near Raydome, Colorado. Durden
and Rose, in their 1978 paper, compare P.
colorado to the extant Baronia
brevicornis,
and suggest that P.
gracilis may be the same
species as P. colorado,
and that the differences between the two
are possibly due to sexual dimorphism. |
|
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