Termitaradus avitinquilinus

Termitaradus avitinquilinus is an extinct species of termite bug in the family Termitaphididae known from several possibly Miocene fossils found in the Dominican Republic. T. avitinquilinus is the first species in the genus Termitaradus to have been described from fossils found in Dominican amber and is one of four species from New World amber, the others being Termitaradus protera, Termitaradus dominicanus and Termitaradus mitnicki.

Termitaradus avitinquilinus is known from a group of three fossil insects which are inclusions in transparent chunks of Dominican amber. The amber was produced by the extinct Hymenaea protera, which formerly grew on Hispaniola, across northern South America and up to southern Mexico. The holotype amber specimen, DR-14-425, is currently housed in the amber fossil collection of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, while the two paratype specimens are in the private Morone amber collection in Turin, Italy. The holotype fossil is composed of a complete adult individual that was collected from an unidentified amber mine in fossil-bearing rocks in the Cordillera Septentrional mountains of northern Dominican Republic. The amber dates from at least the Burdigalian stage of the Miocene, based on studying the associated fossil foraminifera and may be as old as the Middle Eocene, based on the associated fossil coccoliths. This age range is due to the host rock being secondary deposits for the amber and the Miocene the age range is only the youngest that it might be. The fossil was examined by paleoentomologists David Grimaldi and Michael S. Engel, both of the American Museum of Natural History. Grimaldi and Engel's 2008 type description of the new species was published in the natural sciences journal American Museum Novitates. The specific epithet avitinquilinus from the Latin word "avitus" meaning ancestral and the word"inquilinus" which translates to lodger.