Callipogon relictus, a relict, endangered and very rare Cerambycid occuring in Russian Far East, Korean Peninsula and NE China, has been described from Vladivostok region by Andrej Petrovitsch Semenov Tian-Shanskij in 1899 [▽]. C. relictus (which is, among other things, the largest palaearctic beetle...) is the only representative of the otherwise exclusively Neotropical genus Callipogon known from the Old World. Its disjoint distribution is considered evidence of a connection between the Old World and the New World by the Bering land-bridge showed that Callipogon originated in the Paleocene ca. 60 million years ago across the Neotropics and Eastern Palearctic [❖].

The C. relictus is a typical inhabitant of deciduous valley forests and its saproxylo-mycetophagous larvae develop in trunks of dead old deciduous trees (e.g. Ulmus propinqua, Tilia amurensis, Populus maximowiczii, Fraxinus mandschurica, Acer mandschuricum, Quercus mongolica, Betula costata) [✧]. Life cycle is 3 - 5 years. Adults, active from July to September, are crepusural and nocturnal. The biology of this remarkable and protected species is well described in several recent works of Russian and South Korean entomologists [❖][★].

Body length:	♂♂ 60 - 110 mm / ♀♀ 58 - 90 mm
Life cycle:	3 - 5 years
Adults in:	July - September
Host plant:	polyphagous in deciduous trees (Ulmus propinqua, Tilia amurensis, Populus maximowiczii, Fraxinus mandschurica, Acer mandschuricum, Quercus mongolica, Betula costata)
Distribution:	Russian Far East, Korean Peninsula and NE China

The depicted mounted female beetle was collected by a local collector in Kamenushka (Каменушка) village environs (Ussuriysk district, Primorsky Krai, Far Eastern Federal District, Russia) in August 2015. The living male was photographed by Sergey Nikolayevich Ivanov on spur of Siniy khrebet (Синий хребет) range near town Spassk-Dalny (Spassky district, Primorsky Krai, Far Eastern Federal District, Russia) on July 18, 2013.