Platygastridae
The hymenopteran family Platygastridae is a moderate-sized group of exclusively parasitoid wasps, mostly very small (1–2 mm), black, and shining, with geniculate (elbowed) antennae that usually have an eight-segmented flagellum. The wings often lack visible venation, and they may have slight fringes of setae.

Beatriz Moisset · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- PlatygastroideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 93 million years on record.
The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 106.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
23 occurrences of Platygastridae 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
23 occurrences- Early Cretaceous2%
- Late Cretaceous20%
- Eocene39%
- Miocene30%
- Holocene9%
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 Platygastridae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 21 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Platygastridae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Platygastridae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,984 taxa- Ampulicomorpha succinalis3 sites
- Ceratopogonidae3 sites
- Eotemnothorax hystriculus3 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi3 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea3 sites
- Plagiolepis kuenowi3 sites
- Platygastroidea3 sites
- Prenolepis henschei3 sites
- Scelioninae3 sites
- Scutoribates perornatus3 sites
- Tetraponera simplex3 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi3 sites
- Yantaromyrmex samlandicus3 sites
- Allacrotelsa dubia2 sites
- Alticini2 sites
- Anaspis (Spanisa) horaki2 sites
- Arachnida2 sites
- Atyphohelea cothurnata2 sites
- Brachycera2 sites
- Brachypogon (Isohelea) prominulus2 sites
- Bradoponera meieri2 sites
- Ceratopogon forcipiformis2 sites
- Chalcidoidea2 sites
- Chironomidae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Platygastridae, 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
10 references- Fossil Platygastroidea in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution10
- On a Baltic amber collection of Platygastridae and Diapriidae (Hymenoptera)3
- Prototeleia Talamas, Popovici, Shih & Ren: A new genus of Platygastridae from Burmese amber2
- A Parasitic Wasp of the Platygastrid Family (Platygastroidea, Platygastridae, Sceliotrachelinae) First Recorded in the Rovno Amber (Eocene of Ukraine)2
- Et latet et lucet: Discoveries from the Phyletisches Museum amber and copal collection in Jena, Germany1
- New Canadian amber deposit fills gap in fossil record near end-Cretaceous mass extinction1
- Proterosceliopsidae: A new family of Platygastroidea from Cretaceous amber1
- A new amber deposit from the Cretaceous (uppermost Albian-lowermost Cenomanian) of southwestern France1
- Fossil parasitic Hymenoptera of the family Scelionidae from Baltic Amber1
- Nouvelles recherches sur quelques Diptères et Hyménoptères du copal fossile "dit de Zanzibar"1
Each of the 23 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 Platygastridae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Beatriz Moisset
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Platygastridae 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 itPlatygastroidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Haliday 1833)