A Recent species of Frambocythere Colin, 1980 (Ostracoda, Crustacea) from a cave in South Korea; the first extant representative of a genus thought extinct since the Eocene

Abstract. The non-marine ostracod genus Frambocythere Colin, 1980 (Limnocytheridae, Timiriaseviinae) had a previously known stratigraphical range from the Albian (Lower Cretaceous) through to the Lutetian (middle Eocene). However, during surveys of Seongryu Cave in Uljin-gun Province, South Korea, specimens of an extant species of Frambocythere were recovered. This extends the stratigraphic range of the genus by more than 40 million years to the present, and the species is, therefore, considered to be a relict ‘living fossil’. This newly described species is most similar in morphology to Frambocythere gr. tumiensis (Helmdach, 1978), reported from Thanetian (Paleocene) deposits of the Paris Basin. The living species was found in the hypogean realm, in contrast to the fossil species, which were all epigean. It is hypothesized that, like the genus Kovalevskiella Klein, 1963, which belongs to the same lineage, Frambocythere migrated from epigean to hypogean habitats.