Gryllidae
The family Gryllidae contains the subfamilies and genera which entomologists now term true crickets. Having long, whip-like antennae, they belong to the Orthopteran suborder Ensifera, which has been greatly reduced in the last 100 years : taxa such as the tree crickets, spider-crickets and their allies, sword-tail crickets, wood or ground crickets and scaly crickets have been moved or elevated to family level. The type genus is Gryllus and the first use of the family name "Gryllidae" was by Francis Walker.

Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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- Also called
- true cricketsPBDB
- Sits inside
- GryllideaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ensifera
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ensifera
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Ensifera
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Ensifera
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ensifera
Time the record covers
At least 201 million years on record.
The record covers at least 201.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 205.7 Mya to 0 Mya.
169 occurrences of Gryllidae 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
169 occurrences- Late Triassic1%
- Early Jurassic2%
- Late Jurassic4%
- Early Cretaceous23%
- Late Cretaceous8%
- Paleocene2%
- Eocene51%
- Oligocene3%
- Miocene5%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
21 formations
- Green River Formation56
- Crato Formation · Santana Group35
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group9
- Ølst Formation9
- Solnhofen Formation7
- Niveau du gypse d'Aix Formation4
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The named rock units Gryllidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 29 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Gryllidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Gryllidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
3,632 taxa- Pronemobius tertiarius14 sites
- Pteromogoplistes smithii13 sites
- Gryllinae11 sites
- Ectobius kohlsi9 sites
- Eoerianthus eocaenicus9 sites
- Eogryllus unicolor9 sites
- Eotetrix unicornis9 sites
- Eneopterinae7 sites
- Eoformica pinguis7 sites
- Cariblattoides labandeirai6 sites
- Pronemobius6 sites
- Zygoptera6 sites
- Araripegryllus femininus5 sites
- Coleoptera5 sites
- Dolichoderus kohlsi5 sites
- Eogryllus elongatus5 sites
- Lepidoptera5 sites
- Odonata5 sites
- Pteromogoplistes5 sites
- Acrididae4 sites
- Araneae4 sites
- Araripegryllus4 sites
- Archimyrmex rostratus4 sites
- Bibio4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 82 sites for Gryllidae, 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
43 references- Eocene Orthoptera from Green River Formation of Wyoming (USA)52
- Sistemática dos Ensifera (Insecta, Orthopteroida) da formação Santana, Cretáceo Inferior do Nordeste do Brasil30
- Zeuner, 193918
- Oldest known pteroplistine cricket and other Gryllidae (Orthoptera) from the Paleogene Fur and Ølst Formations of Denmark12
- More than a name: mid‐Cretaceous amber fossils link crickets and mole crickets (Orthoptera, Ensifera)4
- New and little known orthopteroid insects (Polyneoptera) from fossil resins: communication 34
- Crickets (Grylloptera: Grylloidea) in Dominican amber4
- Crickets and grasshoppers (Orthoptera) from the latest Eocene of the Isle of Wight, southern England, UK3
- The Tertiary Insects of North America3
- Exceptionally well-preserved orthopteran proventriculi from the Cretaceous Crato Formation of Brazil2
- Um novo género de Orthoptera (Insecta, Grylloidea) da formaçao Santana. Bacia do Araripe (Cretáceo Inferior), Nordeste do Brasil2
- Mesozoic Crickets (Orthoptera, Grylloidea) of Asia2
Each of the 169 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. 31 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 Gryllidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Gryllidae”
- 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 itGryllidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Laicharting 1781