Anthicidae
The Anthicidae are a family of beetles that resemble ants. They are sometimes called ant-like flower beetles or ant-like beetles. The family comprises over 3,500 species in about 100 genera.

Desmond W. Helmore · 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- Also called
- ant like flower beetlePBDB
- Sits inside
- TenebrionoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 121 million years on record.
The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 11.7 ka.
32 occurrences of Anthicidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
32 occurrencesThese 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
8 formations
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group2
- Argiles d'lignite du Soissonnais Formation1
- Randeck Maar Formation1
- Florissant Formation1
- Niveau du gypse d'Aix Formation1
- Maíz Gordo Formation1
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The named rock units Anthicidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 23 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Anthicidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Anthicidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
2,667 taxa- Anthicus6 sites
- Aphodius6 sites
- Phyllobius6 sites
- Bembidion4 sites
- Cholevinus sibiricus4 sites
- Coleoptera4 sites
- Curculionidae4 sites
- Curtonotus alpinus4 sites
- Dicranomyia (Dicranomyia) lobata4 sites
- Elaphrus riparius4 sites
- Hypera ornata4 sites
- Morychus viridis4 sites
- Poecilus nearcticus4 sites
- Prosphyracephala succini4 sites
- Pterostichus (Cryobius)4 sites
- Stenus4 sites
- Stephanocleonus eruditus4 sites
- Troglocollops arcticus4 sites
- Agabus3 sites
- Archaea paradoxa3 sites
- Archipseudophasmatidae3 sites
- Arctogephyra agilis3 sites
- Balticophasma3 sites
- Bledius3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Anthicidae, 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
20 references- Catalogue and composition of fossil Anthicidae and Ischaliidae (Insecta: Coleoptera)4
- Macratriinae (Coleoptera: Anthicidae) of the Baltic amber4
- Late Cenozoic insects of northern Eurasia4
- The beetle (Coleoptera) fauna of the Insect Limestone (late Eocene), Isle of Wight, southern England2
- Tomoderinae (Coleoptera: Anthicidae) of the Baltic amber2
- New heteromerous beetles (Coleoptera) from the Baltic amber of eastern Prussia and gum copal of Zanzibar2
- New extinct Eocene Coleoptera in Baltic amber of Friedhelm Eichmann's collection (Germany)1
- Descripcion de Lemodicarmenia olmedoae gen. et sp. nov. del ámbar cretácico de Myanmar (Coleoptera, Anthicidae, Lemodinae)1
- A new species of Tomoderinae (Coleoptera: Anthicidae) from the Baltic amber1
- New taxa of beetles (Insecta, Coleoptera) from Lebanese amber with evolutionary and systematic comments1
- New beetles of the suborder Polyphaga from the lowermost Eocene French amber (Insecta: Coleoptera)1
- Marine Isotope Stage 9 environments of fluvial deposits at Hackney, north London, UK1
Each of the 32 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. 8 further references are not listed. 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 Anthicidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Desmond W. Helmore
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Anthicidae 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, “Anthicidae”
- 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 itTenebrionoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1819