Argiolestinae
Argiolestinae is a subfamily of damselflies. They belong to the flatwing damselfly family, Argiolestidae. Like their relatives but unlike damselflies of other families, they usually spread their wings horizontally when resting. It is the largest subfamily in Argiolestidae, making up almost three-quarters of the family's species, found primarily in Australia, New Guinea, and New Caledonia.

Richard Higgins from Wollongong, Australia · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- ArgiolestidaePBDB
- 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 least 28 million years on record.
The record covers at least 56 Mya to 27.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 59.24 Mya to 23.04 Mya.
9 occurrences of Argiolestinae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
9 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
2 formations
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The named rock units Argiolestinae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Argiolestinae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Argiolestinae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
51 taxa- Adorator hispidus1 site
- Aeschnidiidae1 site
- Apostenus arnoldorum1 site
- Aradus grabenhorsti1 site
- Archepopovia yurii1 site
- Archipseudophasma1 site
- Archipseudophasmatidae1 site
- Austrolibellula noroestenia1 site
- Balticophasma1 site
- Balticophasma lineata1 site
- Chauliodes1 site
- Copelatus aphroditae1 site
- Cupes groehni1 site
- Cupes rohdendorfi1 site
- Electrapis1 site
- Electromyiomma weitschati1 site
- Empis perdita1 site
- Eogyropsylla eocenica1 site
- Eogyropsylla jantaria1 site
- Eolabulla1 site
- Eometa1 site
- Eomiagrammopes1 site
- Epiaeschna magnifica1 site
- Glyptapis mirabilis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Argiolestinae, 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
7 references- Descriptions of Tertiary insects, part IV2
- The Tertiary Insects of North America2
- First argiolestid damselfly (Odonata: Zygoptera) from the late Palaeocene of Northwest Argentina1
- Damselfly and dragonfly nymphs in Eocene Baltic amber (Insecta: Odonata), with aspects of their palaeobiology1
- Ob iskopayemykh nasekomykh tretichnykh otlozheniy Ashutasa, Zaisanskogo uyezda1
- Some American fossil insects1
- Fossil Dragonflies from Florissant Colorado1
Each of the 9 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 Argiolestinae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Richard Higgins from Wollongong, Australia
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Argiolestinae was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource was 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 itArgiolestidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fraser 1960