#scaraphites

Spotted by Rob Middleton at Mount Lesueur. Mt Lesueur is a near-circular, flat-topped mesa near Jurien Bay 220km  north of Perth, and is an area of AMAZING plant diversity.

One of the other things I found lying around on the ground at Cue - in fact, when I was poking around a small red sand dune next to the dry Lake Austin, I kept finding little piles of dismembered beetle remains. It took me a while to figure out that they were owl pellets, or those of similarly predatory birds. Certainly, the claw marks on that big abdomen I’m holding, and the fact that some of the beetles I was finding can’t fly, suggest that what was eating and regurgitating them had sharp claws and a hooked beak.

Anyway, the Scaritine Ground Beetles - Euryscaphus, Scaraphites, Carenum and others - are generally large, and black, and have a constricted waist and massively over-sized heads and jaws. Like the majority of the Ground Beetles (Carabidae) ferociously carnivorous.

Without a whole specimen, I’m not sure which of Australia’s diverse species this is, but I suspect a Euryscaphus.

Spotted reducing some other unfortunate insect to nutritious pulp, on the side of the path after our nocturnal katydid hunt.

One of eight species of large carnivorous Ground Beetles with enormous jaws and an hourglass figure. They're known from all Australian states, but in the Southern States at least they're most often reported from coastal areas.