Ranatra fusca

Ranatra fusca is a water stick-insect in the family Nepidae, native to North America. It is known by the common name brown water scorpion. It is generally 3.2–4.2 cm (1.3–1.7 in) long. They are carnivorous and feed on other insects and crustaceans. They are most common from spring to autumn.

Ranatra fusca

Greg Hume · 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
Sits inside
RanatraPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At most 12 thousand years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 0 of 1 occurrenceHolocene — about 1 of 1 occurrence17 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence512 ka0 Mya

1 occurrence of Ranatra fusca 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

1 occurrences

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.

Ranatra fusca and its relatives

Holocene

Where Ranatra fusca and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

10 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ranatra fusca, 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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 Ranatra fusca

Credit
Greg Hume
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ranatra fusca 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 itRanatra through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Palisot de Beauvois 1820