Lepismatidae
Lepismatidae is a family of primitive wingless insects with about 340 described species. This family contains the two most familiar members of the order Zygentoma: the silverfish and the firebrat. It is one of five families in the order Zygentoma.

Sebastian Stabinger · CC BY 3.0 · 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
- silverfishPBDB
- Sits inside
- EuzygentomaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 104 million years on record.
The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 8.725 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 5.09 Mya.
18 occurrences of Lepismatidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
18 occurrences- Early Cretaceous11%
- Late Cretaceous17%
- Eocene50%
- Miocene22%
- Plioceneunder 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
1 formation
- Crato Formation · Santana Group2
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The named rock units Lepismatidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lepismatidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Lepismatidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
2,830 taxa- Araneae6 sites
- Allacrotelsa dubia4 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti4 sites
- Enneamerus reticulatus4 sites
- Erotesis aequalis4 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi4 sites
- Holocentropus affinis4 sites
- Holocentropus incertus4 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri4 sites
- Lype sericea4 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea4 sites
- Pachycondyla succinea4 sites
- Plagiolepis klinsmanni4 sites
- Prenolepis henschei4 sites
- Tetraponera ocellata4 sites
- Tetraponera simplex4 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi4 sites
- Atyphohelea cothurnata3 sites
- Brachypogon (Isohelea) prominulus3 sites
- Bradoponera meieri3 sites
- Burmorchestina pulchra3 sites
- Cataglyphoides constricta3 sites
- Clya lugubris3 sites
- Cronicus anomalus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Lepismatidae, 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
12 references- Die "Ur-Insecten" (Thysanura und Collembola im Bernstein)3
- Second contribution to the study of the Dominican Republic amber Zygentoma (Insecta): family Lepismatidae2
- Erstnachweis fischchenartiger Insekten (Zygentoma, Insecta) für das Mesozoikum (Untere Kreide, Brasilien)2
- Die Thysanuren des baltischen Bernsteins2
- Die im Bernstein befindlichen Crustaceen, Myriapoden, Arachniden und Apteren der Vorwelt2
- On the fauna of bristletails (Zygentoma, Microcoryphia) of the Rovno amber1
- Description of two new fossil Zygentoma from Mexico and the Dominican Republic1
- New data on thysanurans preserved in Burmese amber (Microcoryphia and Zygentoma Insecta)1
- A new fossil silverfish (Zygentoma: Insecta) in Mesozoic Burmese amber1
- Arthropodes fossiles de la Montagne d'Andance, Massif du Coiron - Ardèche1
- Arthropods in Burmese amber1
- Footnotes and taxonomic names, in Die im Bernstein befindlichen Crustaceen, Myriapoden, Arachniden und Apteren der Vorwelt1
Each of the 18 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 content1
Picture of Lepismatidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Sebastian Stabinger
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lepismatidae 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 itEuzygentoma through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802