Actea sphinx

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ActeaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 4.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 149.2 Mya and 145.06 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Actea sphinx on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
7 occurrences- Late Jurassic100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Actea sphinx has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Actea sphinx and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Actea sphinx and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
138 taxa- Aeschnogomphus intermedius5 sites
- Chresmoda obscura5 sites
- Cymatophlebia longialata5 sites
- Ditomoptera dubia5 sites
- Hexagenites cellulosus5 sites
- Isophlebia aspasia5 sites
- Lithoblatta lithophila5 sites
- Mesonepa primordialis5 sites
- Myrmicium schroeteri5 sites
- Pseudohydrophilus avitus5 sites
- Pycnophlebia speciosa5 sites
- Scarabaeides deperditus5 sites
- Tarsophlebia eximia5 sites
- Archipsyche eichstattensis4 sites
- Elcana lithophila4 sites
- Mesephemera procera4 sites
- Mesuropetala muensteri4 sites
- Nannogomphus bavaricus4 sites
- Omma brevipes4 sites
- Protolindenia antiqua4 sites
- Pycnophlebia minor4 sites
- Stenophlebia latreillei4 sites
- Aeschnogomphus buchi3 sites
- Ditomoptera minor3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Actea sphinx, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
5 references- Jurassic insects from Solenhofen in the Carnegie Museum and the Museum of Comparative Zoology2
- Die Insectenwelt des lithographischen Scheifers in Bayern2
- Fossil insects from the Tithonian "Solnhofener Plattenkalke" in the Museum of Natural History, Vienna1
- Die Insecten aus dem lithographischen Schiefer1
- Beschreibung einiger neuen fossilen Insecten I. in den lithographischen Schiefern von Bayern und II. im Schieferthon des Steinkohlen-Gebirges von Wettin1
Each of the 7 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Actea sphinx
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itActea through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Münster 1842)