Hairy Backed Pie Dish Beetle from Australia

Shiny spiky black bug
Location: Manjimup, Western Australia
January 11, 2011 7:36 am
Hi Mr. Bugman!
I found this black spiky beetle (?) in the Karri forest of Western Australia and I would like to know what it is! CAn you help me out?
Signature: Marina

Hi Marian,
We doubt that we will be able to fully answer your question before rushing off to work, but we will give you what we have found.  This beetle is very similar to one we identified many years ago, so we searched the Australian beetles in our archive and found a posting entitled Pie Dish Beetle from 2006.  We followed our own links to the Brisbane Insect Website and thought there are obvious similarities, there are also differences, notably the lack of spikes on the Brisbane examples.  We are confident that we are on the right track, but the species and genus are uncertain.  Additionally, the image from our archive is also different.  Perhaps someone can provide a more exact response and we will continue to research as time permits.

We did find a Hairy Backed Pie Dish Beetle, Helea perforata, on FlickR, and that resembles our previous posting, but the spikes on your beetle are thicker.