Paraponera
Paraponera is a genus of ants and the only genus in the subfamily Paraponerinae. The name means "near-Ponera".

April Nobile · CC BY 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- Sits inside
- ParaponerinaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 6.7 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 20.45 Mya and 13.82 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Paraponera 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
2 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.
Paraponera and its relatives
MioceneWhere Paraponera and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
148 taxa- Cephalotes integerrimus2 sites
- Cephalotes obscurus2 sites
- Cephalotes squamosus2 sites
- Leptomyrmex neotropicus2 sites
- Proceratium dominicanum2 sites
- Ablabesmyia electrohispaniolana1 site
- Acanthostichus hispaniolicus1 site
- Alumeda antilliana1 site
- Alumeda dominicana1 site
- Alumeda nigricans1 site
- Americhernes1 site
- Anochetus ambiguus1 site
- Anochetus brevidentatus1 site
- Anochetus conisquamis1 site
- Anochetus corayi1 site
- Anochetus dubius1 site
- Anochetus exstinctus1 site
- Anochetus lucidus1 site
- Antillopsyche auricula1 site
- Antillopsyche digitus1 site
- Antillopsyche oliveri1 site
- Aphaenogaster amphioceanica1 site
- Apocephalus miocenus1 site
- Apocephalus succineus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Paraponera, 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
2 references- The Identity of the Dominican Paraponera (Amber Collection Stuttgart: Hymenoptera, Formicidae. V: Ponerinae, partim)1
- Ants of the Dominican amber (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) 4. A giant ponerine in the genus Paraponera1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Paraponera
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- April Nobile
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Paraponera”
- 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 itParaponerinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Smith 1858