Melanthripidae

Melanthripidae is a family of thrips belonging to the order Thysanoptera. Members of the family, covered with gymnosperm pollen, were found in Cretaceous Spanish amber about 110-105 million years old. They are believed to have been pollinators of the Ginkgoales.

Melanthripidae

Uncredited · 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
TerebrantiaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 82 million years on record.

The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 18.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 106.3 Mya to 16.3 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 2 of 29 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 2 of 29 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 29 occurrencesEocene — about 22 of 29 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 29 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 2 of 29 occurrencesMiocene108–105 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences105–102 Mya — about 1 occurrence102–99 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences96–93 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences93–89 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences86–83 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences83–80 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences80–77 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences77–74 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences74–71 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences58–55 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences55–52 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences52–49 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences49–46 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences39–36 Mya — about 7 occurrences36–33 Mya — about 13 occurrences33–30 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences30–27 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences21–18 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences18–15 Mya — about 1 occurrence100.5 Mya18.5 Mya108 Mya15 Mya

29 occurrences of Melanthripidae 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

29 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.

Found in

5 formations

Barstow — 34.95°N, 116.83°WBarstow — 34.94°N, 116.83°WEscucha — 42.64°N, 2.72°WGreen River — 39.00°N, 108.00°WArgiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°EKabaw — 21.68°N, 94.08°E

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The named rock units Melanthripidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 22 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Melanthripidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Melanthripidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

2,997 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Melanthripidae, 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

18 references

Each of the 29 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. 6 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 Melanthripidae

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Melanthripidae 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 itTerebrantia through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Bagnall 1913)