Berosus
Berosus is a genus of beetles in the family Hydrophilidae, the water scavenger beetles. The genus contains 273 species. It is distributed worldwide.

Udo Schmidt from Deutschland · 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
- BerosiniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 45 million years on record.
The record covers at least 45.9 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 51.1 Mya to 11.7 ka.
13 occurrences of Berosus 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
13 occurrences- Eocene54%
- Oligocene23%
- Pleistocene23%
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
4 formations
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The named rock units Berosus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Berosus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Berosus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,064 taxa- Aeolothrips jarzembowskii3 sites
- Anglogomphaeschna eocenica3 sites
- Aphidoidea3 sites
- Beraeodes vectensis3 sites
- Camponotites cockerelli3 sites
- Chironomidae3 sites
- Chironomini3 sites
- Colopha incognita3 sites
- Culex protorhinus3 sites
- Dicranomyia (Dicranomyia) brodiei3 sites
- Ectobiidae3 sites
- Emplastus britannicus3 sites
- Emplastus hypolithus3 sites
- Gonomyia (Gonomyia) indecisa3 sites
- Gymnastes (Paragymnastes) fasciatipennis3 sites
- Hydrochara woodwardi3 sites
- Hydroporinae3 sites
- Ichneumonidae3 sites
- Lepidoptera3 sites
- Lestes regina3 sites
- Leucotaphus gurnetensis3 sites
- Limnophila (Limnophila) cyclospila3 sites
- Limnophila (Limnophila) deleta3 sites
- Ochlerotatus protolepis3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Berosus, 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
5 references- The beetle (Coleoptera) fauna of the Insect Limestone (late Eocene), Isle of Wight, southern England5
- Paleogeography of the lower Volga at the end of Atelian time based on entomological and botanical data3
- Fossil Hydrophilid Beetles (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae) of the Late Oligocene Rott Formation (Germany)2
- The Fossil Insects of the Green River Shales2
- Käfer und Polypen aus der Braunkohle des Siebengebirges1
Each of the 13 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 Berosus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Udo Schmidt from Deutschland
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Berosus 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 itBerosini through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leach 1817