Prophalangopsidae
The family Prophalangopsidae are insects belonging to the order Orthoptera. They are the only extant members of the superfamily Hagloidea. There is only one extant genus in North America, where they are known as grigs, four genera in Asia, and many extinct genera.

Kevinjudge · CC BY-SA 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- Also called
- hump-winged cricketPBDB
- Sits inside
- HagloideaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ensifera
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ensifera
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Ensifera
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Ensifera
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ensifera
Time the record covers
At least 126 million years on record.
The record covers at least 192.9 Mya to 66 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 56 Mya.
171 occurrences of Prophalangopsidae on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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
171 occurrences- Early Jurassic9%
- Middle Jurassic14%
- Late Jurassic46%
- Early Cretaceous30%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
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
34 formations
- Daohugou Formation49
- Karabastau Formation21
- Yixian Formation · Jehol Group18
- Solnhofen Formation13
- Jiulongshan Formation7
- Zaza Formation7
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The named rock units Prophalangopsidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Prophalangopsidae and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Prophalangopsidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
2,927 taxa- Parahagla sibirica8 sites
- Ampliceps furcitibia7 sites
- Oxycorynoides (Oxycorynoides) similis7 sites
- Protoscelis jurassica7 sites
- Aeschnogomphus intermedius6 sites
- Akinisia chorevei6 sites
- Aktassoblatta fusca6 sites
- Allaboilus gigantus6 sites
- Ano ona6 sites
- Archirhyphus asiaticus6 sites
- Asioblatta punctata6 sites
- Asvab bavsa6 sites
- Blattula brevicaudata6 sites
- Blattula microscopica6 sites
- Blattula rectinervosa6 sites
- Cameloblatta variegata6 sites
- Chresmoda obscura6 sites
- Cymatophlebia longialata6 sites
- Decomposita triocella6 sites
- Ditomoptera dubia6 sites
- Falcatusiblatta casovec6 sites
- Hexagenites cellulosus6 sites
- Insecta6 sites
- Isophlebia aspasia6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 91 sites for Prophalangopsidae, 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
59 references- New Mesozoic Hagloidea (Orthoptera)18
- Revision and new taxa of fossil Prophalangopsidae (Orthoptera: Ensifera)11
- High acoustic diversity and behavioral complexity of katydids in the Mesozoic soundscape8
- Fossil Haglidae (Orthoptera) in China8
- Systematic significance of wing morphology in extinct Prophalangopsidae (Insecta, Ensifera) revealed by geometric morphometrics and description of two new species7
- New prophalangopsids from late Mesozoic of China (Orthoptera, Prophalangopsidae, Aboilinae)7
- Orthopterans, Gryllida, in Pozdne-Mezozoyskie Nasekomye Vostochnogo Zabaykal'ya7
- Yurskie pryamokrylye yuzhnoy Sibiri i zapadnoy Mongolii (Gryllida=Orthoptera)6
- Grasshoppers and crickets (Insecta: Orthoptera) from the Lower Cretaceous of southern England5
- New Jurassic protaboilins from China (Orthoptera: Prophalangopsidae, Protaboilinae)5
- Filogeniya ortopteroidnykh nasekomykh5
- Zeuner, 19395
Each of the 171 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. 47 further references are not listed. 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 Prophalangopsidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Kevinjudge
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Prophalangopsidae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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 itHagloidea through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Kirby 1906)