Raphidiidae
Raphidiidae is a family of snakeflies in the order Raphidioptera, based on the type genus Raphidia.

Hectonichus · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- NeoraphidiopteraPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 40 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 5.09 Mya.
34 occurrences of Raphidiidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
34 occurrencesThese 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
6 formations
- Florissant Formation12
- Green River Formation4
- Klondike Mountain Formation2
- Creede Formation1
- Allenby Formation · Princeton Group1
- Kishenehn Formation1
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The named rock units Raphidiidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 13 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Raphidiidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Raphidiidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
678 taxa- Archiinocellia protomaculata4 sites
- Okanagrion hobani4 sites
- Okanopteryx4 sites
- Adamsochrysa3 sites
- Leptostigma brevilatum3 sites
- Okanagrion3 sites
- Zygoptera3 sites
- Acer stonebergae2 sites
- Acer washingtonense2 sites
- Acer wehri2 sites
- Allorapisma chuorum2 sites
- Aphaenogaster mayri2 sites
- Apis2 sites
- Bibio wickhami2 sites
- Calopterygoidea2 sites
- Dinokanaga dowsonae2 sites
- Dolichoderus antiquus2 sites
- Dysagrionites2 sites
- Eohemichroa eophila2 sites
- Eoprephasma hichensi2 sites
- Eorpa ypsipeda2 sites
- Gerridae2 sites
- Glossina oligocenus2 sites
- Gomphidae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 24 sites for Raphidiidae, 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
19 references- Early Eocene snakeflies (Raphidioptera) of western North America from the Okanagan Highlands and Green River Formation9
- Nouveaux Raphidioptères fossiles du Cénozoïque de France et d'Espagne5
- The Tertiary Insects of North America4
- Fossil Neuropterida (Insecta: Neuroptera and Raphidioptera) from the middle Eocene Kishenehn Formation, Montana, USA1
- A new species of Succinoraphidia Aspöck & Aspöck, 2004 (Raphidioptera: Raphidiidae) from the late Eocene Rovno amber, with venation characteristics of the genus1
- A revision of the late Eocene snakeflies (Raphidioptera) of the Florissant Formation, Colorado, with special reference to the wing venation of the Raphidiomorpha1
- A new snakefly from the Eocene Green River Formation (Raphidioptera: Raphidiidae)1
- A Miocene snakefly from Stewart Valley, Nevada (Raphidioptera: Raphidiidae)1
- Two significant new snakeflies from Baltic amber, with discussion on autapomorphies of the order and its included taxa (Raphidioptera)1
- A new Eocene-Oligocene snakefly from Florissant, Colorado (Raphidioptera: Raphidiidae)1
- The Baltic amber snake-flies (Neuroptera)1
- Revision of the Nearctic Raphidiodea (recent and fossil)1
Each of the 34 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. 7 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 Raphidiidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Hectonichus
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Raphidiidae 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, “Raphidiidae”
- 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 itNeoraphidioptera through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1810