Mordellidae

The Mordellidae are a family of beetles commonly known as tumbling flower beetles for the typical irregular movements they make when escaping predators, or as pintail beetles due to their elongated abdominal tip. The adults feed on pollen of flowers. Worldwide, there are about 1500 species.

Mordellidae

Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
tumbling flower beetlePBDB
Sits inside
TenebrionoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 113 million years on record.

The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Early Cretaceous — about 2 of 54 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 6 of 54 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 54 occurrencesEocene — about 38 of 54 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 3 of 54 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 1 of 54 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 54 occurrencesPleistocene — about 4 of 54 occurrences122–118 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences118–114 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences114–110 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences110–106 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences106–102 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences102–98 Mya — about 3 occurrences98–94 Mya — about 3 occurrences53–49 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences49–45 Mya — about 2 occurrences45–41 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences41–37 Mya — about 9 occurrences37–33 Mya — about 27 occurrences33–28 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences28–24 Mya — about 2 occurrences24–20 Mya — about 1 occurrence20–16 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences16–12 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences4.1–0 Mya — about 4 occurrences113.2 Mya129 ka122 Mya0 Mya

54 occurrences of Mordellidae 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

54 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

9 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WGreen River — 39.46°N, 108.41°WGreen River — 39.53°N, 107.95°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ECampagne-Calavon — 43.85°N, 5.58°EEscucha — 42.64°N, 2.72°WOlympia beds — 47.66°N, 122.43°WHighbury Silts and Sands — 51.56°N, 0.06°WMazantic Shale — 17.15°N, 92.70°WKishenehn — 48.39°N, 113.70°W

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The named rock units Mordellidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 34 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Mordellidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Mordellidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

2,885 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 23 sites for Mordellidae, 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

31 references

Each of the 54 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. 19 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 content2

Picture of Mordellidae

Credit
Didier Descouens
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
tunosemi
Licence
CC Attribution-ShareAlike
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itTenebrionoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802