Fulgoroidea
A planthopper is any insect in the infraorder Fulgoromorpha, in the suborder Auchenorrhyncha, a group exceeding 12,500 described species worldwide. The name comes from their remarkable resemblance to leaves and other plants of their environment and that they often "hop" for quick transportation in a similar way to that of grasshoppers. However, planthoppers generally walk very slowly. Distributed worldwide, all members of this group are plant-feeders, though few are considered pests. Fulgoromorphs are most reliably distinguished from the other Auchenorrhyncha by two features: the bifurcate (Y-shaped) anal vein in the forewing, and the thickened, three-segmented antennae, with a generally round or egg-shaped second segment (pedicel) that bears a fine filamentous arista.

Charles J. Sharp · 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
- EucixioidianPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 244 million years on record.
The record covers at least 244.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 245.19 Mya to 0 Mya.
226 occurrences of Fulgoroidea 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
226 occurrences- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceous4%
- Late Cretaceous6%
- Paleocene3%
- Eocene61%
- Oligocene1%
- Miocene17%
- Plioceneunder 1%
- Holocene8%
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
31 formations
- Green River Formation34
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group13
- Shanwang Formation11
- Florissant Formation7
- Eifel Formation6
- Messel Formation4
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The named rock units Fulgoroidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 112 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Fulgoroidea and its relatives
EoceneWhere Fulgoroidea and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
4,007 taxa- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi11 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi10 sites
- Prenolepis henschei10 sites
- Cerambycidae8 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea8 sites
- Tetraponera simplex8 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti7 sites
- Formica gustawi7 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri7 sites
- Pachycondyla succinea7 sites
- Plagiolepis kuenowi7 sites
- Tetraponera ocellata7 sites
- Trichoneura (Trichoneura) vulgaris7 sites
- Dasyhelea6 sites
- Formica flori6 sites
- Formicidae6 sites
- Limois shanwangensis6 sites
- Plagiolepis klinsmanni6 sites
- Balticoroma serafinorum5 sites
- Blattodea5 sites
- Ceratopogon5 sites
- Diptera5 sites
- Dolichoderus tertiarius5 sites
- Forcipomyia5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 117 sites for Fulgoroidea, 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
111 references- The Tertiary Insects of North America19
- Aphids, true hoppers, jumping plant-lice, scale insects, true bugs and whiteflies (Insecta: Hemiptera) from the Insect Limestone (latest Eocene) of the Isle of Wight, UK13
- An overview of Fulgoromorpha and Cicadomorpha in east African copal (Hemiptera)10
- Die im Bernstein befindlichen Hemipteren und Orthopteren der Vorwelt10
- New planthoppers of the tribe Achilini (Homoptera, Fulgoroidea, Achilidae) from Baltic amber9
- Eocene Insects from the Rocky Mountains9
- Systematik, Phylogenie, Taphonomie und Paläoökologie der Insekten aus dem Mittel-Eozän des Eckfelder Maares, Vulkaneifel6
- Zhang, 19896
- Beitrag zur Kenntnis der eozänen Arthopodenfauna des Geiseltales6
- New planthoppers (Insecta: Hemiptera: Fulgoromorpha) from the middle Eocene Messel maar4
- Eocene insects from Denmark4
- The Fossil Insects of the Green River Shales4
Each of the 226 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. 99 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 Fulgoroidea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Fulgoroidea 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Planthopper”
- 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 itEucixioidian through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1807