Noctuites
Noctuites is a genus of extinct moths in the Noctuoidea superfamily. This genus was originally designated to accommodate noctuids of uncertain association. Most noctuoid fossils are incomplete, making them hard to place in a modern phylogeny of Noctuoidea. For this reason the genus has not been assigned to a family.

Olei · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikidata/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
- NoctuoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 27 million years on record.
The record covers at least 27.3 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 11.7 ka.
15 occurrences of Noctuites on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
15 occurrences- Oligocene13%
- Miocene73%
- Pliocene7%
- Pleistocene7%
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
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The named rock units Noctuites has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Noctuites and its relatives
MioceneWhere Noctuites and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
406 taxa- Formicidae3 sites
- Aphodius rufipes2 sites
- Bibio2 sites
- Bibionidae2 sites
- Camponotus2 sites
- Chrysopa martynovae2 sites
- Coleoptera2 sites
- Curculionidae2 sites
- Formicinae2 sites
- Gnoriste meigeniana2 sites
- Lasius occultatus2 sites
- Penthetria2 sites
- Penthetria anthracina2 sites
- Penthetria longa2 sites
- Plecia bucklandi2 sites
- Plecia morio2 sites
- Ptyelus spumiferus2 sites
- Tipula varia2 sites
- Abia1 site
- Acanthocinus schmidti1 site
- Acilius praesulcatus1 site
- Acrididae1 site
- Adelges1 site
- Aeshna stavropolensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Noctuites, 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
8 references- Paleontologiya cheshukerylykh i voprosy filogenii otrayada Papilionida7
- Heer, 18492
- An annotated catalog of fossil and subfossil Lepidoptera (Insecta: Holometabola) of the world1
- Über die bisher im Pliozän von Willershausen gefundenen Schmetterlings und Raupenreste1
- Novyy predstavitel' sem. Cossidae iz Miotsenovykh otlozheniy Kavkaza (Lepidoptera, Insecta)1
- Die Fossilen Insekten und die Phylogenie der Rezenten Formen, parts V-VII1
- Recherches sur les insectes fossiles des terrains Tertiaires de la France, première partie, insectes fossiles de l'Auvergne1
- Ueber die fossilen Insekten von Aix in der Provence1
Each of the 15 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 Noctuites
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Olei
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Noctuites 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Noctuites”
- 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 itNoctuoidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Heer 1849