Ptinidae
Ptinidae is a family of beetles in the superfamily Bostrichoidea. There are at least 220 genera and 2,200 described species in Ptinidae worldwide. The family includes spider beetles and deathwatch beetle, as well as the cigarette, drugstore and furniture beetles.

xpda · 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
- spider beetlePBDB
- Sits inside
- BostrichoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 100 million years on record.
The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 106.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
157 occurrences of Ptinidae 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
157 occurrences- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
- Late Cretaceous8%
- Eocene69%
- Oligocene3%
- Miocene4%
- Pleistocene15%
- Holoceneunder 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
12 formations
- Florissant Formation11
- Highbury Silts and Sands Formation7
- Green River Formation5
- London Clay Formation4
- Rott Formation2
- Kap København Formation2
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The named rock units Ptinidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 120 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ptinidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Ptinidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
3,931 taxa- Stenus13 sites
- Aphodius12 sites
- Aleocharinae9 sites
- Phyllobius8 sites
- Anobium punctatum7 sites
- Bryaxis7 sites
- Carpelimus7 sites
- Dyschiriodes globosus7 sites
- Helophorus7 sites
- Hydraena7 sites
- Ochthebius minimus7 sites
- Rhynchaenus quercus7 sites
- Anotylus rugosus6 sites
- Bembidion (Diplocampa) assimile6 sites
- Bledius6 sites
- Caenocara bovistae6 sites
- Curculionidae6 sites
- Limnichus pygmaeus6 sites
- Limnius volckmari6 sites
- Orectochilus villosus6 sites
- Oulimnius troglodytes6 sites
- Pelochares versicolor6 sites
- Tanysphyrus (Tanysphyrus) lemnae6 sites
- Apion5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 72 sites for Ptinidae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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
79 references- New fossil species of Ptinidae (Insecta: Coleoptera) in Baltic amber (Tertiary, Eocene)17
- Three new species of Ptininae (Coleoptera: Bostrichoidea: Ptinidae) from Eocene Baltic amber10
- Three new Ptinidae (Coleoptera: Bostrichoidea) from Eocene Baltic amber7
- Marine Isotope Stage 9 environments of fluvial deposits at Hackney, north London, UK7
- New Miocene Coleoptera from Florissant5
- New data on the genus Sucinoptinus (Coleoptera, Ptinidae) from Rovno amber4
- New Ptinidae (Coleoptera: Bostrichoidea) from Baltic amber with a list of known fossil species4
- Late Cenozoic insects of northern Eurasia4
- A new genus and species of Ptinidae (Coleoptera) from Eocene Baltic amber3
- Two fossil species of Petaliini White (Coleoptera: Ptinidae: Dorcatominae) from Eocene Baltic amber3
- A new species of Xyletinus Latreille, 1809 (Coleoptera: Ptinidae: Xyletininae) from Eocene Baltic amber, with a key to known fossil species3
- New extinct Eocene Coleoptera in Baltic amber of Friedhelm Eichmann's collection (Germany)3
Each of the 157 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. 67 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 Ptinidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- xpda
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ptinidae 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Ptinidae”
- 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 itBostrichoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802