Bracon
Bracon is a genus of wasps in the Braconidae, a family of parasitoid wasps. There are several hundred described species but there are thousands still undescribed. The genus is cosmopolitan, distributed throughout the world, with most of the described species occurring in the Palearctic realm.

Nils Linek · CC BY 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
- BraconiniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 35 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 12.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 11.63 Mya.
21 occurrences of Bracon 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
21 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
7 formations
- Florissant Formation6
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group3
- Green River Formation1
- Allenby Formation · Princeton Group1
- Salt Formation1
- Niveau du gypse d'Aix Formation1
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The named rock units Bracon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Bracon and its relatives
EoceneWhere Bracon and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,018 taxa- Curculionidae5 sites
- Coleoptera4 sites
- Formicidae4 sites
- Solenopsis superba4 sites
- Tipula4 sites
- Apioninae3 sites
- Cydnus armiger3 sites
- Cydnus tertiarius3 sites
- Lepidoptera3 sites
- Plecia bucklandi3 sites
- Plecia foersteri3 sites
- Plecia pinguis3 sites
- Solenopsis valida3 sites
- Aeshnidae2 sites
- Aphanus contractus2 sites
- Aphidecta marginata2 sites
- Camponotites vehemens2 sites
- Chironomidae2 sites
- Chrysochloa pulchra2 sites
- Cydnus archaicus2 sites
- Cydnus brevicollis2 sites
- Cydnus dignus2 sites
- Cydnus pygmaeus2 sites
- Cydnus sagittifer2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Bracon, 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
14 references- The parasitic Hymenoptera of the Tertiary of Florissant, Colorado5
- The wasps, bees and ants (Insecta: Vespida=Hymenoptera) from the Insect Limestone (Late Eocene) of the Isle of Wight, UK2
- Les insectes fossiles des terrains oligocènes de France2
- Die Insekten der "Plattigen Steinmergels" von Brunstatt2
- Zhang, 19891
- Fossil Arthropods in the British Museum, V. Oligocene Hymenoptera from the Isle of Wight1
- Quelques insectes de l'Aquitanien de Rott, Sept-Monts (Prusse rhénane)1
- Some fossil parasitic Hymenoptera1
- Über einige fossile Insekten aus den Braunkohlenschichten (Aquitanien) von Rott (Siebengebirge)1
- Nouvelles recherches sur quelques Insectes du Sannoisien D' Aix-en-Provence1
- Appendix A. The fossil insects collected in 1877, by Mr. G.M. Dawson, in the interior of British Columbia1
- The Fossil Insects of the Green River Shales1
Each of the 21 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. 2 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 Bracon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nils Linek
- Licence
- CC BY 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Bracon was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access 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 itBraconini through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fabricius 1805