Sepulcidae is a family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 of extinct hymenoptera

Hymenoptera

Hymenoptera is one of the largest orders of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees and ants. There are over 130,000 recognized species, with many more remaining to be described. The name refers to the heavy wings of the insects, and is derived from the Ancient Greek ὑμήν : membrane and...

n insects. The family is known primarily from late Mesozoic

Mesozoic

The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...

 fossils found in 1968 in Transbaikal

Transbaikal

Transbaikal, Trans-Baikal, Transbaikalia , or Dauria is a mountainous region to the east of or "beyond" Lake Baikal in Russia. The alternative name, Dauria, is derived from the ethnonym of the Daur people. It stretches for almost 1000 km from north to south from the Patomskoye Plateau and North...

ia. The insects were distant relatives of modern sawflies

Sawfly

Sawfly is the common name for insects belonging to suborder Symphyta of the order Hymenoptera. Sawflies are distinguishable from most other Hymenoptera by the broad connection between the abdomen and the thorax, and by their caterpillar-like larvae...

.

The genus was first identified by Alexandr Pavlovich Rasnitsyn. It was named by his colleague and a science-fiction author Kirill Eskov after a group of fictional entities called sepulki, found in Stanisław Lem's The Star Diaries

The Star Diaries

Dzienniki gwiazdowe is a 1971 collection of short stories by Polish writer Stanisław Lem around the character of space traveller Ijon Tichy...

and Observation on the Spot

Observation on the Spot

Observation on the Spot is a science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem which has not been translated into English. It deals with Ijon Tichy's traveling to a faraway planet, Entia to study their civilization...

. The relation to Lem's sepulki is understandable in both Polish and Russian, but their English translation obscures their association with ancient insects as they are translated as Scrupts in English editions of Lem's novels.

The genus included three species, as well as a number of sub-species:

• Sepulca
  • Sepulca mirabilis
  • Sepulca mongolica
• Sepulenia
  • Sepulenia syricta
• Prosyntexis
  • Prosyntexis gouleti
  • Prosyntexis legitima
  • Prosyntexis montsecensis