Termitaradus protera

Termitaradus protera is an extinct species of termite bug in the family Termitaphididae known from several Late Oligocene to Early Miocene fossils found in Mexico. T. protera is the only species in the extant genus Termitaradus to have been described from fossils found in Mexican amber and is one of four species from new world amber; the others are Termitaradus avitinquilinus, Termitaradus dominicanus and Termitaradus mitnicki.T. protera was also the first termite bug described from the fossil record.

Termitaradus protera is known from a series of fossil insects which are inclusions in transparent chunks of Mexican amber. An amber specimen, in the collection of W. Weitschat of Hamburg, Germany, has a total of five T. protera individuals preserved together with portions of seven worker caste termites. The amber was produced by the extinct leguminous tree Hymenaea mexicana, and has dimensions of 38 by 15 by 12 millimetres (1.50 by 0.59 by 0.47 in). Mexican amber is recovered from fossil-bearing rocks in the Simojovel region of Chiapas, Mexico. The amber dates from between 22.5 million years old, for the youngest sediments of the Balumtun Sandstone, and 26 million years old for the oldest La Quinta Formation. This age range straddles the boundary between the Late Oligocene and Early Miocene and is complicated by both formations being secondary deposits for the amber; the age range is therefore only the youngest that it might be. The fossil was examined by paleoentomologists George Poinar, Jr. of Oregon State University and Ernst Heiss of Innsbruck, Austria; Poinar's description of the fossil was published in a 2011 article in the journal Palaeodiversity. The species was first studied and described by Poinar and John T. Doyen in 1992.