Anisops

Anisops is a genus of insects in the family Notonectidae. They're sometimes referred to as backswimmers, so called because they swim upside down.

Anisops

Ben Jobson · 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
AnisopinaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 31 million years on record.

The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 1.8 Mya.

Eocene — about 1 of 16 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 12 of 16 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 2 of 16 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 16 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 16 occurrences38–37 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences35–33 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences28–27 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences27–26 Mya — about 4 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 4 occurrences25–23 Mya — about 4 occurrences23–22 Mya — about 2 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences7.3–6.1 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences6.1–4.8 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences3.6–2.3 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences2.3–1.1 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences33.9 Mya2.58 Mya38.4 Mya1.1 Mya

16 occurrences of Anisops on record, most of them in the Oligocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

16 occurrences

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

  • Rott FormationNordrhein-Westfalen, North Rhine-Westphalia · DE · 27.3–23.04 Mya11
Rott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°E

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The named rock units Anisops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Anisops and its relatives

Oligocene

Where Anisops and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.

Found in the same rock

524 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Anisops, 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

6 references

Each of the 16 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Anisops

Credit
Ben Jobson
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Anisops 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 itAnisopinae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Spinola 1840