Asilidae

The Asilidae are the robber fly family, also called assassin flies. They are powerfully built, bristly flies with a short, stout proboscis enclosing the sharp, sucking hypopharynx. The name "robber flies" reflects their expert predatory habits; they feed mainly or exclusively on other insects and, as a rule, they wait in ambush and catch their prey in flight.

Asilidae

Charles J. Sharp · 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
Also called
robber flyPBDB
Sits inside
AsiloideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 113 million years on record.

The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 0 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 4 of 79 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 4 of 79 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 79 occurrencesEocene — about 43 of 79 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 12 of 79 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 14 of 79 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 79 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 79 occurrences122–118 Mya — about 1 occurrence118–114 Mya — about 3 occurrences114–110 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences102–98 Mya — about 1 occurrence98–94 Mya — about 2 occurrences94–89 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences57–53 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences53–49 Mya — about 2 occurrences49–45 Mya — about 3 occurrences45–41 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences41–37 Mya — about 6 occurrences37–33 Mya — about 31 occurrences33–28 Mya — about 5 occurrences28–24 Mya — about 5 occurrences24–20 Mya — about 2 occurrences20–16 Mya — about 7 occurrences16–12 Mya — about 4 occurrences12–8.1 Mya — about 2 occurrences4.1–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences113.2 Mya11.7 ka122 Mya0 Mya

79 occurrences of Asilidae 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

79 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

14 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WGreen River — 39.98°N, 109.11°WGreen River — 41.56°N, 109.55°WGreen River — 41.55°N, 109.51°WCrato — 7.13°S, 39.70°WShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°ERenova — 45.21°N, 112.18°WUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ENiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WAllenby — 49.45°N, 120.59°WSalt — 47.69°N, 7.53°ERaritan — 40.47°N, 74.32°WKishenehn — 48.39°N, 113.70°WCampagne-Calavon — 43.85°N, 5.58°E

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The named rock units Asilidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 22 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Asilidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Asilidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

4,054 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 52 sites for Asilidae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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

52 references

Each of the 79 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. 40 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 Asilidae

Credit
Charles J. Sharp
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itAsiloidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802