Mesochorista proavita
Mesochorista proavita is an extinct species of scorpionfly from the Triassic period of Queensland, Australia.

Uncredited · Public Domain · 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
- MesochoristaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 22 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 227.3 Mya and 205.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Mesochorista proavita on record, most of them in the Late Triassic. 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
3 occurrences- Late Triassic100%
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
2 formations
- Blackstone Formation · Ipswich Coal Measures Group1
- Mount Crosby Formation · Ipswich Coal measures Group1
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The named rock units Mesochorista proavita has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Mesochorista proavita and its relatives
Late TriassicWhere Mesochorista proavita and its relatives were recorded in the Late Triassic.
Found in the same rock
95 taxa- Mesojassus ipsviciensis2 sites
- Odonata2 sites
- Ademosyne australiensis1 site
- Ademosyne cameroni1 site
- Ademosyne congener1 site
- Ademosyne major1 site
- Ademosyne olliffi1 site
- Ademosyne punctata1 site
- Ademosynoides angusta1 site
- Ademosynoides minor1 site
- Ademosynoides obtusa1 site
- Ademosynoides striatella1 site
- Archebittacus exilis1 site
- Archeosmylus costalis1 site
- Archeosmylus stigmatus1 site
- Archepsychops triassicus1 site
- Archexyela crosbyi1 site
- Austrochoristella whitehousei1 site
- Austromylacrites latus1 site
- Baiera1 site
- Blattodea1 site
- Calamostachys1 site
- Cladochoristella bryani1 site
- Crosbella elongata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Mesochorista proavita, 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
3 references- Fossil insects from the Triassic beds at Mt. Crosby, Queensland1
- Triassic insects of Queensland. 1. Eoses, a probably lepidopterous insect from the Triassic beds of Mt. Crosby, Queensland1
- Descriptions of the fossil Insects; Mesozoic and Tertiary Insects of Queensland and New South Wales. Descriptions of the fossil Insects and stratigraphical features1
Each of the 3 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 Mesochorista proavita
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mesochorista proavita 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 itMesochorista through timeFormations of the Late TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Tillyard 1916