Gerontoformica

Gerontoformica is an extinct genus of stem-group ants. The genus contains thirteen described species known from Late Cretaceous fossils found in Asia and Europe. The species were described between 2004 and 2016, with a number of the species formerly being placed into the junior synonym genus Sphecomyrmodes.

Gerontoformica

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
SphecomyrminaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At most 13 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 106.3 Mya and 93.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 19 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 18 of 19 occurrencesLate Cretaceous106–106 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences106–105 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences105–105 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences105–104 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences104–104 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences104–103 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences103–103 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences103–102 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences102–102 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences102–101 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences101–101 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences101–100 Mya — about 1 occurrence100–100 Mya — about 1 occurrence100–99 Mya — about 1 occurrence99–99 Mya — about 1 occurrence99–98 Mya — about 1 occurrence98–98 Mya — about 1 occurrence98–97 Mya — about 1 occurrence97–97 Mya — about 1 occurrence97–97 Mya — about 1 occurrence97–96 Mya — about 1 occurrence96–96 Mya — about 1 occurrence96–95 Mya — about 1 occurrence95–95 Mya — about 1 occurrence95–94 Mya — about 1 occurrence94–94 Mya — about 1 occurrence106.8 Mya93.4 Mya

19 occurrences of Gerontoformica on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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

19 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.

Gerontoformica and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Gerontoformica and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

420 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Gerontoformica, 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

9 references

Each of the 19 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 content2

Picture of Gerontoformica

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

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
tunosemi
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itSphecomyrminae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Nel and Perrault 2004