A horned globu-lifer!

Whilst out tussocking just before Christmas, a few of the beetles that I found were new ones for me.

One of the larger ones was this whopper of a staph. Just eyeballing it I was fairly confident that it was either an Ocypus or Tasgius and my money was on the latter, but a bit of keying was needed to get me to species level.

The Key by Derek Lott, lumps these two genera so the first thing given its coloring is to look at the pronotal punctures to see if there are two different sizes or whether they are all roughly the same.

There are all the same. Check.

Then I need to check the legs. Red or black? Black.

Next up is the ratio of the temples (bit behind the eyes) to eyes + whether the mandibles have an inner tooth . So the temples are about the same as the diameter of the eye and the mandibles don't have a central tooth on the inner margin.

A close up of the head and mandibles gives the impression, to my warped mind at least, of a horned devil.

Next, the specimen has a parallel sided pronotum, not a tapered one and the inner margins of the mandibles are sinuate (curvy) on the central bit.

This gets me to either Tasgius globulifer or T. winkleri. I was hoping for a male so I could dissect out the aedaegus for an easy ID but no such luck. However, in the species pair the shape of the female's last abdominal tergite (last upper section of the abdomen) is diagnostic. 

Mine ended in a sharp point meaning that this is a female T. globulifer and a new beetle for me!