Asiloidea

The Asiloidea comprise a very large superfamily insects in the order Diptera, the true flies. It has a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring worldwide. It includes the family Bombyliidae, the bee flies, which are parasitoids, and the Asilidae, the robber flies, which are predators of other insects.

Asiloidea

Muhammad Mahdi Karim · GFDL 1.2 · 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
HeterodactylaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 165 million years on record.

The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 170.9 Mya to 0 Mya.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 183 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 183 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 16 of 183 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 20 of 183 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 183 occurrencesEocene — about 105 of 183 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 12 of 183 occurrencesMiocene — about 26 of 183 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 1 of 183 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 183 occurrences174–169 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences169–163 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences128–122 Mya — about 3 occurrences122–116 Mya — about 8 occurrences116–110 Mya — about 6 occurrences105–99 Mya — about 4 occurrences99–93 Mya — about 12 occurrences93–87 Mya — about 2 occurrences87–81 Mya — about 2 occurrences64–58 Mya — about 1 occurrence58–52 Mya — about 3 occurrences52–46 Mya — about 9 occurrences46–41 Mya — about 3 occurrences41–35 Mya — about 65 occurrences35–29 Mya — about 30 occurrences29–23 Mya — about 7 occurrences23–17 Mya — about 11 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 14 occurrences12–5.8 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences5.8–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences165.3 Mya11.7 ka174 Mya0 Mya

183 occurrences of Asiloidea 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

183 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

21 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WCrato — 7.13°S, 39.70°WGreen River — 39.98°N, 109.11°WGreen River — 38.90°N, 109.20°WGreen River — 41.56°N, 109.55°WGreen River — 41.55°N, 109.51°WGreen River — 39.51°N, 108.03°WArgiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°EShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°ERenova — 45.21°N, 112.18°WYixian — 41.62°N, 120.83°EUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°EKishenehn — 48.39°N, 113.70°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ENiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°ERaritan — 40.47°N, 74.32°WBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WKheta — 71.31°N, 99.56°EZaza — 53.30°N, 112.09°EAllenby — 49.45°N, 120.59°WSalt — 47.69°N, 7.53°EItat — 56.17°N, 93.17°ELaiyang — 36.78°N, 120.67°ECampagne-Calavon — 43.85°N, 5.58°EMenat — 46.10°N, 2.90°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Asiloidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 98 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Asiloidea and its relatives

Eocene

Where Asiloidea and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

4,095 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 98 sites for Asiloidea, 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

99 references

Each of the 183 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. 87 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 Asiloidea

Credit
Muhammad Mahdi Karim
Licence
GFDL 1.2
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Asiloidea 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 itHeterodactyla through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

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