Corydalidae

The family Corydalidae contains the megalopterous insects known as dobsonflies and fishflies. Making up about three dozen genera, they occur primarily throughout North America, both temperate and tropical, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Asia.

Corydalidae

Didier Descouens · 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
dobsonflyPBDB
Sits inside
EumegalopteraPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 178 million years on record.

The record covers at least 205.7 Mya to 27.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 227.3 Mya to 23.04 Mya.

Late Triassic — about 1 of 21 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 21 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 1 of 21 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 4 of 21 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 6 of 21 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 21 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 21 occurrencesEocene — about 7 of 21 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 21 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 21 occurrences231–224 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences224–217 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences217–210 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences210–203 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences168–161 Mya — about 1 occurrence161–153 Mya — about 2 occurrences153–146 Mya — about 1 occurrence146–139 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences132–125 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences125–118 Mya — about 3 occurrences118–111 Mya — about 3 occurrences76–69 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences69–61 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences40–33 Mya — about 7 occurrences33–26 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences26–19 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences205.7 Mya27.3 Mya231 Mya19 Mya

21 occurrences of Corydalidae 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 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

10 formations

Jiulongshan — 41.32°N, 119.24°ESolnhofen — 48.91°N, 11.14°EZaza — 53.30°N, 112.09°ECrato — 7.13°S, 39.70°WLaramie — 40.45°N, 104.62°WDaohugou — 41.32°N, 119.24°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EGidarinskaya — 52.15°N, 120.71°EYixian — 41.42°N, 118.97°EProtopivka — 49.18°N, 37.05°E

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The named rock units Corydalidae 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.

Corydalidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Corydalidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

2,143 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 18 sites for Corydalidae, 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

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 Corydalidae

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

No 3D scan of Corydalidae 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 itEumegaloptera through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leach 1815