Ctenobethylus goepperti

Ctenobethylus is an extinct genus of ants in the subfamily Dolichoderinae. The genus contains two described species as of 2026, both known from various Eocene European amber deposits.

Ctenobethylus goepperti

Vincent Perrichot · CC BY 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
Sits inside
CtenobethylusPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At most 11 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 37.71 Mya and 27.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Eocene — about 28 of 29 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 29 occurrencesOligocene38–37 Mya — about 2 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 3 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 3 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 3 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 3 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 3 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 3 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 3 occurrences35–34 Mya — about 3 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 3 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences34–33 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences33–33 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences33–33 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences33–32 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences32–32 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences32–31 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences31–31 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences31–31 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences31–30 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences30–30 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences30–29 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences29–29 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences29–29 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences29–28 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences28–28 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences28–28 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences28–27 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences38.2 Mya26.8 Mya

29 occurrences of Ctenobethylus goepperti on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

29 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

1 formation

Salt — 47.69°N, 7.53°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Ctenobethylus goepperti has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 28 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Ctenobethylus goepperti and its relatives

Eocene

Where Ctenobethylus goepperti and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

3,310 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 26 sites for Ctenobethylus goepperti, 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

11 references

Each of the 29 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 Ctenobethylus goepperti

Credit
Vincent Perrichot
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ctenobethylus goepperti 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 itCtenobethylus through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Mayr 1868)