Empididae

Empididae is a family of flies with over 3,000 described species occurring worldwide in all the biogeographic realms but the majority are found in the Holarctic. They are mainly predatory flies like most of their relatives in the Empidoidea, and exhibit a wide range of forms but are generally small to medium-sized, non-metallic and rather bristly.

Empididae

André Karwath aka Aka · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
dagger flyPBDB
Sits inside
EmpidoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 165 million years on record.

The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 170.9 Mya to 0 Mya.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 112 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 6 of 112 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 5 of 112 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 5 of 112 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 112 occurrencesEocene — about 78 of 112 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 11 of 112 occurrencesMiocene — about 5 of 112 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 112 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 112 occurrences174–169 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences169–163 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences157–151 Mya — about 4 occurrences151–145 Mya — about 2 occurrences145–139 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences139–134 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences128–122 Mya — about 2 occurrences122–116 Mya — about 2 occurrences116–110 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences105–99 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences99–93 Mya — about 1 occurrence93–87 Mya — about 2 occurrences87–81 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences81–76 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences76–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences58–52 Mya — about 1 occurrence52–46 Mya — about 2 occurrences41–35 Mya — about 55 occurrences35–29 Mya — about 21 occurrences29–23 Mya — about 9 occurrences23–17 Mya — about 4 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences12–5.8 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences5.8–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence165.3 Mya11.7 ka174 Mya0 Mya

112 occurrences of Empididae 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

112 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

14 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WKarabastau — 42.90°N, 70.00°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EYixian — 41.15°N, 117.96°EYixian — 41.62°N, 120.83°ENiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°ERaritan — 40.47°N, 74.32°WBakhar — 45.22°N, 99.17°EGreen River — 39.45°N, 108.39°WWasatch — 39.79°N, 108.57°WCampagne-Calavon — 43.85°N, 5.58°EGurvan-Eren — 46.38°N, 93.95°ELulworth — 51.08°N, 1.98°WMasaragawa — 38.25°N, 138.41°EFoulden Hills Diatomite — 45.53°S, 170.22°E

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The named rock units Empididae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 68 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Empididae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Empididae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

3,880 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 44 sites for Empididae, and this reads all 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

41 references

Each of the 112 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. 29 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 Empididae

Credit
André Karwath aka Aka
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Empididae 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 itEmpidoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1804