STUDIES ON NORTH AMERICAN CARBONIFEROUS 
INSECTS. 5. PALAEODICTYOPTERA AND 
MEGASECOPTERA FROM ILLINOIS AND TENNESSEE, 
WITH A DISCUSSION OF 
THE ORDER SYPHAROPTEROIDEA * 
By F. M. Carpenter 
Harvard University 
The insects treated in this paper are from the Upper Carboniferous 
deposits of the “Mazon Creek” region of Illinois and of a new lo- 
cality in Anderson County, Tennessee. All represent undescribed 
species, with one exception — the type specimen of Sypharoptera 
pneuma Handlirsch, for which the author erected a separate order, 
Sypharopteroidea. 
I am indebted to Dr. Sergius Mamay of the U. S. Geological 
Survey and to Mr. Robert Rapp for the opportunity of studying the 
Tennessee fossil; and to the authorities of the Peabody Museum at 
Yale University for the loan of the type of the Sypharoptera. To 
Mr. Walter Dabasinskas of Cicero, Illinois, I am especially grateful 
for his kindness in sending me for study more of the remarkable 
insects which he has collected in the ironstone nodules near Braid- 
wood, Illinois. The efforts which he and Mrs. Dabasinskas have 
put into the collecting of fossils in the nodules are a major contri- 
bution to the study of Carboniferous insects. 
Order Palaeodictyoptera 
Family Breyeriidae Handlirsch 
This family includes species of large size, having an unbranched 
MA and CuA, a forked CuP, MP with at least three branches and 
Rs with at least four branches; cross veins are numerous and some- 
what irregular but do not form a reticulation. The hind wings are 
broader basally than the fore wings but the venation is essentially 
the same except for the more numerous anal veins. 
The family has been found in Upper Carboniferous strata in Eng- 
land, Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia. 1 The species described 
below is the first from a North American deposit. The generic 
*This research has been aided by Grant No. GB 2038 from the National 
Science Foundation. The previous part in this series was published in 
Psyche 72: 175-190. 1965. 
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