Blapsium

Blapsium is an extinct genus of beetles from the Middle Jurassic of England.^[1][2] The only described species is B. egertoni, which was first described by John O. Westwood in 1854.^[3] The species is known from a single specimen found by the Earl of Enniskillen at the Taynton Limestone Formation, also known as the Stonesfield Slate,^[4] which Sir Philip Egerton then passed to Westwood for description.^[3] The specimen is deposited in the Natural History Museum, London. It is incompletely preserved, lacking a head, pronotum and legs. It has a broad, convex body. It has a very short metathorax, which suggests that it was possibly apterous.^[1][5]

Blapsium Temporal range: Middle Jurassic, Bathonian PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
John O. Westwood's figure of Blapsium egertoni
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Coleoptera
Family:	Ommatidae
Genus:	†Blapsium Westwood, 1854
Species:	†B. egertoni
Binomial name
†Blapsium egertoni Westwood, 1854
Synonyms
Blapsidium Phillips, 1871

In his original description of the genus, Westwood compared Blapsium to the darkling beetles and ground beetles.^[3] Ponomarenko (2006) redescribed the holotype of B. egertoni and referred it to the tribe Notocupedini in the family Ommatidae (considered in the paper to be a subfamily of Cupedidae), which was followed by Kirejtshuk (2020).^[1][5]