Scarab beetle - broken fragment

[Beatsy]

I ordered a male/female pair of Phanaeus vindex via Ebay but sadly they got proper smushed in transit. All that remained was mostly dust and small fragments (seller is replacing but the package hasn't arrived yet).

Fortunately one fragment was still usable for macro stacks. This is shown in the first pic (5x mitty). It's a side view of the top half of the male's head. It's facing right and up at ~30 degrees with the "horn" sweeping out at the top left. I think the nut-like thing is just a palp (2nd pic, 20x mitty).

But the big surprise was finding a second compound eye on the same side, low down behind the palp (3rd pic, just a crop into the first). It's actually quite a bit bigger than the eye on top. This would have been hidden behind carapace were the specimen intact and I'd have never noticed it. Every cloud, eh?

[ChrisR]

How sure are you that's another eye?
I can only find so far the Whirligig beetle having more than one pair - lower for under water.

[Beatsy]

How sure are you that's another eye?

Haha. Good question. Perhaps I should say (more correctlly) I'm sure it *looks* like another compound eye - but I would be amazed if it wasn't.

I found some images on google showing beetles with compound eyes extending from the top and around to the bottom, with a "notch" where the carapace cut into the edge. This looks similar, except the eye is completely separate. Looking at other images of this species shows an area fully covered with metallic carapace, so I'm pretty confident that's all that was broken off in this area.

[royalwinchester]

So unfortunate that your package was damaged, sorry to hear that.
But what a fascinating looking creature, and nice images!