Brachinus
Brachinus is a genus of ground beetle native to the Nearctic, Palearctic, the Near East and North Africa. Beetles in this genus are commonly referred to as bombardier beetles. The genus contains the following species:

Patrick Coin ( Patrick Coin ) · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- BrachininaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 8 million years on record.
The record covers at least 11.63 Mya to 3.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 12.8 Mya to 2.58 Mya.
2 occurrences of Brachinus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
2 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Brachinus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Brachinus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Brachinus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
244 taxa- Scarabaeoidea2 sites
- Abia1 site
- Acanthocinus schmidti1 site
- Acilius oeningensis1 site
- Adelges1 site
- Aeshna tyche1 site
- Aeshnidae1 site
- Aleocharinae1 site
- Allopliosilpha inclavata1 site
- Anisoptera1 site
- Anthophorites veterana1 site
- Anthribidae1 site
- Anthribinae1 site
- Aphelocheirus (Aphelocheirus) affinis1 site
- Aphididae1 site
- Aphodius anteactus1 site
- Aphodius rufipes1 site
- Aphrophora spumarioides1 site
- Araneae1 site
- Araneidae1 site
- Asilus deperditus1 site
- Atrophini1 site
- Badister prodromus1 site
- Berytopsis femoralis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Brachinus, 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
2 references- Dritter Beitrag über Käfer (Coleoptera) aus dem Jungtertiär von Willershausen, Bl. Northeim 42261
- Heer, 18471
Each of the 2 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 Brachinus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Patrick Coin ( Patrick Coin )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Brachinus 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, “Brachinus”
- 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 itBrachinina through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Weber 1801