Protoitidae

Protoitidae is an extinct family of parasitic wasps, in the superfamily Chalcidoidea, within the order Hymenoptera. The group was name in 2023, by Julian M. Ulmer and Lars Krogmann, who included several genera from Lower Cretaceous Lebanese amber, most notably Protoita and Cretaxenomerus.^[1] These fossils, dated to around 125–130 million years ago (Barremian age), are among the earliest known members of the chalcidoid wasps.^[1]

Protoitidae Temporal range: Barremian (Cretaceous)
Cretaxenomerus tenuipenna
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Suborder:	Apocrita
Infraorder:	Proctotrupomorpha
Superfamily:	Chalcidoidea
Family:	†Protoitidae Ulmer & Krogmann, 2023
Genera
†Protoita Ulmer & Krogmann, 2023 †Cretaxenomerus Ulmer & Krogmann, 2023

The fossils were found in amber deposits from Lebanon, and offer a rare insight into the early Cretaceous insect fauna. Ulmer and Krogmann used high-resolution micro-CT scans to the wasps' anatomy in detail and by doing so, identified a set of traits unlike those found in any living or previously known family. The significance of the fossils is not only in their unusual traits, but the hint this provides that these insects broke away early from the main ancestral line.^[1]

Although the family is known only from fossils, Protoitidae expands the evolutionary record of chalcidoid wasps; in doing so it shows how their diversification had already begun to develop by the early Cretaceous. This discovery, from Lebanese amber, adds another piece to the picture of a rapidly evolving community of parasitic wasps, in the earliest days of flowering-plant ecosystems.^[1]