Chrysops

Deer flies are bloodsucking insects considered pests to humans and cattle. They are large flies with large brightly coloured compound eyes, and large clear wings with dark bands. They are larger than the common housefly and smaller than the horse fly. There are 250 species of deer fly in the genus Chrysops. Their distribution is worldwide, though they have not been reported in Iceland, Greenland, or Hawaii.

Chrysops

Bruce Marlin · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
ChrysopsiniPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 31 million years on record.

The record covers at least 59.24 Mya to 27.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 61.66 Mya to 23.04 Mya.

Paleocene — about 1 of 3 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 0 of 3 occurrencesOligocene — about 2 of 3 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 0 of 3 occurrences62–61 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences61–60 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences60–58 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences28–26 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences25–24 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences24–22 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences59.24 Mya27.3 Mya62.4 Mya22.3 Mya

3 occurrences of Chrysops on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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

3 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

2 formations

Niveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°EMenat — 46.10°N, 2.90°E

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The named rock units Chrysops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Chrysops and its relatives

Oligocene

Where Chrysops and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.

Found in the same rock

205 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Chrysops, 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

Each of the 3 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 content2

Picture of Chrysops

Credit
Bruce Marlin
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
MooreLab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itChrysopsini through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Meigen 1803