Agonum
Agonum is a large genus of ground beetles in the subfamily Harpalinae, tribe Platynini. They are mid-sized to smallish beetles, typically with dark metallic hues – often reddish or bronze, but sometimes black, green etc.

xpda · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. 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
- PlatyniniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 59 million years on record.
The record covers at least 59.24 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 61.66 Mya to 11.7 ka.
37 occurrences of Agonum on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
37 occurrences- Paleocene3%
- Miocene11%
- Pleistocene86%
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
7 formations
- Titusville Till Formation12
- Kap København Formation4
- Olympia beds Formation3
- Menat Formation1
- Imuruk Volcanics Formation1
- Scarborough Formation1
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The named rock units Agonum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Agonum and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Agonum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,022 taxa- Stenus17 sites
- Aleocharinae12 sites
- Bembidion12 sites
- Helophorus11 sites
- Bledius10 sites
- Hydroporus9 sites
- Aphodius8 sites
- Dyschirius8 sites
- Olophrum rotundicolle8 sites
- Patrobus stygicus8 sites
- Carabidae7 sites
- Dytiscidae7 sites
- Elateridae7 sites
- Olophrum consimile7 sites
- Omaliinae7 sites
- Quedius7 sites
- Scydmaeninae7 sites
- Staphylinidae7 sites
- Amara6 sites
- Catops6 sites
- Elaphrus lapponicus6 sites
- Eucnecosum6 sites
- Hydrobius fuscipes6 sites
- Ilybius6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Agonum, 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
12 references- Fossil Beetle Evidence for a Short Warm Interval near 40,000 yr B.P. at Titusville, Pennsylvania12
- Late Cenozoic insects of northern Eurasia5
- Palaeoenvironmental interpretation of Middle and Late Wisconsinan fossil coleopteran assemblages from western Olympic Peninsula, Washington, USA4
- Palaeoentomology of the Kap København Formation, a Plio-Pleistocene sequence in Peary Land, North Greenland4
- The paleoenvironment of the Olympia beds based on fossil beetles from Discovery Park, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.3
- A Late Pleistocene fauna and flora from Upton Warren, Worcestershire3
- Marine Isotope Stage 9 environments of fluvial deposits at Hackney, north London, UK1
- Late Devensian river deposits beneath the floodplain terrace of the River Thames at Abingdon, Berkshire, England1
- A Pliocene flora and insect fauna from the Bering Strait region1
- Piton, 19401
- Canadian fossil insects, 4. Additions to the coleopterous fauna of the interglacial clays of the Toronto district1
- Pleistoceńskie owady z Borysławia1
Each of the 37 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 Agonum
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- xpda
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Agonum was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Agonum”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPlatynini through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bonelli 1810