Orthemis ferruginea
The roseate skimmer is a species of dragonfly in the family Libellulidae. It is native to the Americas, where its distribution extends from the United States to Brazil. It is common and widespread. It is an introduced species in Hawaii.

Vitaly_Charny ( talk ) ( Uploads ) · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- OrthemisPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, insectivorePBDB, for Odonata
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Odonata
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Odonata
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Odonata
- Environment
- freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Odonata
Time the record covers
At most 2.2 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 18.5 Mya and 16.3 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Orthemis ferruginea on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
1 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
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The named rock units Orthemis ferruginea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Orthemis ferruginea and its relatives
MioceneWhere Orthemis ferruginea and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
28 taxa- Anaphothrips (Proscirtothrips) vitreus1 site
- Anostraca1 site
- Argenna fossilis1 site
- Calopsectra1 site
- Carpelimus1 site
- Ceratopogoninae1 site
- Cletocamptus1 site
- Cryptotermes1 site
- Culicoides megacanthus1 site
- Cybocephalus1 site
- Dasyhelea antiqua1 site
- Dendryphantes1 site
- Entomobrya1 site
- Euscelis1 site
- Formicinae1 site
- Gnathotermes1 site
- Lycosidae1 site
- Melanthrips1 site
- Miogonates1 site
- Miotroctes1 site
- Notonectidae1 site
- Palpomyia1 site
- Parastylotermes1 site
- Procymophyes1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Orthemis ferruginea, 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Orthemis ferruginea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Vitaly_Charny ( talk ) ( Uploads )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itOrthemis through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Fabricius 1775)