Diploptera

Diploptera, occasionally called beetle cockroaches, is a genus of blaberid cockroaches in the monotypic subfamily Diplopterinae. Cockroaches of this genus resemble beetles, with hardened tegmina and cross-folded hindwings. They live in tropical forests in South China and Southeast Asia, and Pacific islands including Hawaii. They are viviparous cockroaches and are therefore used for insect endocrinological studies.

Diploptera

Peterwchen · 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
Sits inside
DiplopterinaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 81 million years on record.

The record covers at least 132.6 Mya to 51.1 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 143.1 Mya to 45.9 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 0 of 6 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 6 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 6 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 6 occurrencesEocene — about 5 of 6 occurrencesEocene145–142 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences142–138 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences138–135 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences135–132 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences54–51 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences51–47 Mya — about 3 occurrences47–44 Mya — about 1 occurrence132.6 Mya51.1 Mya145 Mya44 Mya

6 occurrences of Diploptera 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

6 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

Green River — 39.53°N, 107.95°WGreen River — 39.59°N, 108.07°WPing Chau — 22.55°N, 114.43°E

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

Diploptera and its relatives

Eocene

Where Diploptera and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

7 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Diploptera, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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 6 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 Diploptera

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

No 3D scan of Diploptera 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 itDiplopterinae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Saussure 1864