Allenbya
Allenbya is an extinct odonate genus possibly in the damselfly-like family Dysagrionidae with the single included species Allenbya holmesae. The genus was first described in 2022 from an Early Eocene Okanagan Highlands site in western North America. The species is known from the late Ypresian sediments exposed around Princeton in Central British Columbia.

Archibald & Cannings (2022) · CC BY 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
- DysagrionidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, insectivorePBDB, for Odonata
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Odonata
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Odonata
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Odonata
- Environment
- freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Odonata
Time the record covers
At most 19 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 56 Mya and 37.71 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Allenbya on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
2 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
- Allenby Formation · Princeton Group2
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Allenbya has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Allenbya and its relatives
EoceneWhere Allenbya and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
4 taxa- Aeshnidae1 site
- Labandeiraia1 site
- Labandeiraia burlingameae1 site
- Titanomyrma1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Allenbya, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- The first Odonata from the early Eocene Allenby Formation of the Okanagan Highlands, British Columbia, Canada (Anisoptera, Aeshnidae and cf. Cephalozygoptera, Dysagrionidae)1
- Permineralized fruits and seeds from the Princeton Chert (Middle Eocene) of British Columbia: Nymphaeaceae1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Allenbya
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Archibald & Cannings (2022)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Allenbya 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
- 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 itDysagrionidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Archibald and Cannings 2022