Byrrhidae

Byrrhidae, the pill beetles, is a family of beetles in the superfamily Byrrhoidea. They are generally found in damp habitats within cooler-high latitude regions of both hemispheres. Most byrrhids feed on moss, lichens and algae, though some species feed on vascular plants. The oldest undoubted record of the family is Lidryops from the earliest Late Cretaceous Charentese amber of France, with other less certain records going back to the Middle Jurassic, but these possibly belong to Byrrhoidea. There around 500 extant species in 40 genera.

Byrrhidae

AfroBrazilian · 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
pill beetlePBDB
Sits inside
ByrrhoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 199 million years on record.

The record covers at least 199.5 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 0 Mya.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 182 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 2 of 182 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 182 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 2 of 182 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 7 of 182 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 182 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 182 occurrencesEocene — about 14 of 182 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 2 of 182 occurrencesMiocene — about 6 of 182 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 182 occurrencesPleistocene — about 136 of 182 occurrences205–199 Mya — about 2 occurrences151–144 Mya — about 2 occurrences144–137 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences123–116 Mya — about 4 occurrences116–110 Mya — about 2 occurrences110–103 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences103–96 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences55–48 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences48–41 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences41–34 Mya — about 12 occurrences34–27 Mya — about 1 occurrence27–21 Mya — about 2 occurrences14–6.8 Mya — about 4 occurrences6.8–0 Mya — about 151 occurrences199.5 Mya11.7 ka205 Mya0 Mya

182 occurrences of Byrrhidae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

182 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

19 formations

Kap København — 82.47°N, 23.66°WKap København — 82.45°N, 24.10°WKap København — 82.32°N, 23.85°WFlorissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WKeremesit — 69.50°N, 158.50°EKeremesit — 69.17°N, 158.12°EEdoma — 69.50°N, 158.50°EHighbury Silts and Sands — 51.56°N, 0.06°WTitusville Till — 41.62°N, 79.64°WOlympia beds — 47.66°N, 122.43°WOler — 69.50°N, 158.50°EQuadra Sand — 49.29°N, 122.88°WLushangfen — 39.78°N, 116.11°EUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°EImuruk Volcanics — 65.88°N, 163.13°WInsektenmergel — 47.47°N, 8.23°ETurga — 50.83°N, 116.19°EUkurei — 52.31°N, 117.04°EGreen River — 41.55°N, 109.51°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ESaijo — 34.38°N, 132.72°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°W

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The named rock units Byrrhidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 84 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Byrrhidae and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Byrrhidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

2,618 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 123 sites for Byrrhidae, 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

31 references

Each of the 182 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. 19 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 Byrrhidae

Credit
AfroBrazilian
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Byrrhidae 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 itByrrhoidea through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1804