Platystomatidae
The Platystomatidae are a distinctive family of flies (Diptera) in the superfamily Tephritoidea.

Fritz Geller-Grimm · 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- Also called
- signal flyPBDB
- Sits inside
- TephritoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Platystomatidae on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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
2 occurrences- Holocene100%
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.
Platystomatidae and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Platystomatidae and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
24 taxa- Acalyptratae1 site
- Apis mellifera1 site
- Calyoza staphylinoides1 site
- Ceratobaeus incertus1 site
- Chaetogonopteron sobrium1 site
- Diaphorus alsiosus1 site
- Exechia erupta1 site
- Keroplatidae1 site
- Leptogaster erecta1 site
- Megaselia (Aphiochaeta) inclusa1 site
- Megaselia (Aphiochaeta) infossa1 site
- Megaselia (Aphiochaeta) obruta1 site
- Megaselia (Aphiochaeta) praepedita1 site
- Megaselia (Megaselia) copalina1 site
- Megaselia (Megaselia) ethiopia1 site
- Micropeza prompta1 site
- Neoempheria maculata1 site
- Platygastridae1 site
- Pyrellia viridissima1 site
- Scholastes foordi1 site
- Sciara radians1 site
- Sciomyzidae1 site
- Thylacella eversiana1 site
- Trentepohlia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Platystomatidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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- An ortalid fly in British amber1
- Sur quelques diptères (Muscinae, Ortalinae, Helomyzinae) du copal Récent de Zanzibar1
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 content1
Picture of Platystomatidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Fritz Geller-Grimm
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Platystomatidae 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 itTephritoidea through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Schiner 1862