Elateroidea

The Elateroidea are a large superfamily of beetles. It contains the familiar click beetles, fireflies, and soldier beetles and their relatives. It consists of about 25,000 species.

Elateroidea

Sarefo · 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
ElateriformiaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 241 million years on record.

The record covers at least 241.464 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 244.4 Mya to 0 Mya.

Early Triassic — about 0 of 1093 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 2 of 1093 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 8 of 1093 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 14 of 1093 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 5 of 1093 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 207 of 1093 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 59 of 1093 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 162 of 1093 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 8 of 1093 occurrencesEocene — about 434 of 1093 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 26 of 1093 occurrencesMiocene — about 75 of 1093 occurrencesPliocene — about 3 of 1093 occurrencesPleistocene — about 83 of 1093 occurrences249–241 Mya — about 2 occurrences233–224 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences224–216 Mya — about 1 occurrence216–208 Mya — about 1 occurrence208–199 Mya — about 6 occurrences199–191 Mya — about 6 occurrences191–183 Mya — about 1 occurrence183–175 Mya — about 6 occurrences166–158 Mya — about 10 occurrences158–150 Mya — about 181 occurrences150–141 Mya — about 22 occurrences141–133 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences133–125 Mya — about 10 occurrences125–116 Mya — about 35 occurrences116–108 Mya — about 10 occurrences108–100 Mya — about 22 occurrences100–91 Mya — about 139 occurrences91–83 Mya — about 3 occurrences83–75 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences75–66 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences66–58 Mya — about 7 occurrences58–50 Mya — about 11 occurrences50–42 Mya — about 73 occurrences42–33 Mya — about 352 occurrences33–25 Mya — about 17 occurrences25–17 Mya — about 44 occurrences17–8.3 Mya — about 37 occurrences8.3–0 Mya — about 95 occurrences241.464 Mya11.7 ka249 Mya0 Mya

1,093 occurrences of Elateroidea on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

1,093 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

73 formations

Karabastau — 42.90°N, 70.00°EKarabastau — 42.69°N, 70.41°EFlorissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WMessel — 49.93°N, 8.75°EEifel — 50.10°N, 6.84°EYixian — 41.16°N, 119.31°EYixian — 41.62°N, 120.83°EYixian — 41.75°N, 120.80°EHighbury Silts and Sands — 51.56°N, 0.06°WUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°EDaohugou — 41.32°N, 119.24°EShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EZaza — 53.30°N, 112.09°EZaza — 53.20°N, 112.82°ETitusville Till — 41.62°N, 79.64°WGreen River — 38.90°N, 109.20°WGreen River — 41.56°N, 109.55°WGreen River — 39.23°N, 108.22°WGreen River — 39.63°N, 108.15°WGreen River — 41.82°N, 110.76°WTsumori — 32.79°N, 130.86°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WPoole — 50.72°N, 1.88°WPoole — 50.65°N, 2.11°WPoole — 50.65°N, 2.06°WShiti — 24.46°N, 111.50°EDzhil — 42.70°N, 77.20°EJinju — 35.13°N, 128.10°EJinju — 35.86°N, 128.42°EAllenby — 49.44°N, 120.54°WAllenby — 49.45°N, 120.59°WFirkanten — 78.10°N, 14.20°ECattamarra Coal Measures — 30.26°S, 115.23°EBlackstone — 27.62°S, 152.75°EKap København — 82.47°N, 23.66°WKap København — 82.45°N, 24.10°W

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The named rock units Elateroidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 49 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 548 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Elateroidea and its relatives

Eocene

Where Elateroidea and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

7,162 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 349 sites for Elateroidea, and this reads 240 of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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

319 references

Each of the 1,093 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. 307 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 Elateroidea

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

No 3D scan of Elateroidea 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 itElateriformia through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

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