Harpalus
Harpalus is a genus of ground beetle first described by Pierre André Latreille in 1802.

Uncredited · Attribution · 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
- HarpalinaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 89 million years on record.
The record covers at least 89.8 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 93.9 Mya to 11.7 ka.
52 occurrences of Harpalus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
52 occurrences- Late Cretaceous8%
- Paleocene4%
- Eocene15%
- Oligocene23%
- Miocene13%
- Pleistocene37%
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
13 formations
- Upper Freshwater-Molasse Formation6
- Florissant Formation6
- Salt Formation3
- Niveau du gypse d'Aix Formation3
- Green River Formation1
- Menat Formation1
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Harpalus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 25 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Harpalus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Harpalus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,826 taxa- Phyllobius11 sites
- Aphodius10 sites
- Coleoptera9 sites
- Curculionidae9 sites
- Curtonotus alpinus9 sites
- Morychus viridis9 sites
- Pterostichus (Cryobius)8 sites
- Stephanocleonus eruditus8 sites
- Bibionidae7 sites
- Chrysolina rufilabris7 sites
- Hypera ornata7 sites
- Plecia foersteri7 sites
- Poecilus nearcticus7 sites
- Bembidion6 sites
- Cholevinus sibiricus6 sites
- Entimini6 sites
- Troglocollops arcticus6 sites
- Apioninae5 sites
- Caenocara bovistae5 sites
- Cleonini5 sites
- Coniocleonus ferrugineus5 sites
- Diptera5 sites
- Formicidae5 sites
- Tachinus arcticus5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 36 sites for Harpalus, 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
24 references- Late Cenozoic insects of northern Eurasia12
- Les insectes fossiles des terrains oligocènes de France5
- Beiträge zur Insektenfauna Oeningens: Coleoptera. Geodephagen, Hydrocanthariden, Gyriniden, Brachelytren, Clavicornen, Lamellicornen und Buprestiden5
- Carabidae (Coleoptera: Harpalinae: Harpalini: Harpalina) from an Upper Cretaceous rock deposit at Orapa Diamond Mine in Botswana4
- Adephagous and clavicorn Coleoptera from the Tertiary deposits at Florissant, Colorado with descriptions of a few other forms and a systematic list of the non-rhynchophorus Tertiary Coleoptera of North America3
- New Species of Fossil Beetles from Florissant, Colorado2
- Die Insekten der "Plattigen Steinmergels" von Brunstatt2
- Recherches sur les insectes fossiles des terrains Tertiaires de la France, deuxième partie, insectes fossiles d'Aix en Provence2
- Heer, 18472
- Fossil Mesozoic and Cenozoic weevils (Coleoptera, Obrienioidea, Curculionoidea)1
- Environmental interpretation of fossil insect assemblages from MIS 5 at Ziegler Reservoir, Snowmass Village, Colorado1
- Marine Isotope Stage 9 environments of fluvial deposits at Hackney, north London, UK1
Each of the 52 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. 12 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 Harpalus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Harpalus was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource 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 itHarpalina through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802