Plecia canadensis
Plecia canadensis is an extinct species of Plecia in the fly family Bibionidae. The species is solely known from Early Eocene sediments exposed in central southern British Columbia. The species is one of twenty bibionid species described from the Eocene Okanagan Highlands paleofauna.

Rice, H.M.A., 1959 · OGL-C 2.0 · 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
- PleciaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 56 Mya and 48.07 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Plecia canadensis on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
6 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
- Allenby Formation · Princeton Group3
- Tranquille Formation · Kamloops Group1
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The named rock units Plecia canadensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Plecia canadensis and its relatives
EoceneWhere Plecia canadensis and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
26 taxa- Plecia transitoria4 sites
- Plecia avus3 sites
- Plecia curtula3 sites
- Plecia reducta3 sites
- Plecia similkameena3 sites
- Penthetria fryi2 sites
- Plecia pictipennis2 sites
- Plecia tulameenensis2 sites
- Aphrophora angusta1 site
- Asilidae1 site
- Bracon1 site
- Coelidia columbiana1 site
- Coleoptera1 site
- Equisetum similkamense1 site
- Etoptychoptera tertiaria1 site
- Microphor defunctus1 site
- Penthetria intermedia1 site
- Planophlebia gigantea1 site
- Plecia angustipennis1 site
- Plecia elatior1 site
- Plecia minutula1 site
- Plecia nana1 site
- Plecia pulla1 site
- Telmatrechus stali1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Plecia canadensis, 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- Fossil Bibionidae (Diptera) from British Columbia5
- Canadian fossil Insects. 5. Insects from the Tertiary lake deposits of the southern interior of British Columbia, collected by Mr. Lawrence M. Lambe1
Each of the 6 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 Plecia canadensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Rice, H.M.A., 1959
- Licence
- OGL-C 2.0
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
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 itPlecia through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Handlirsch 1910)