Sialidae

Alderflies are megalopteran insects of the family Sialidae. They are closely related to the dobsonflies and fishflies as well as to the prehistoric Euchauliodidae. All living alderflies – about 66 species all together – are part of the subfamily Sialinae, which contains nine extant genera.Sialis lutaria is the commonest alderfly in the United Kingdom and across much of Europe.

Sialidae

Uncredited · 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
alderflyPBDB
Sits inside
NothomegalopteraPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 205 million years on record.

The record covers at least 205.7 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 227.3 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Late Triassic — about 1 of 25 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 1 of 25 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 25 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 1 of 25 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 25 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 3 of 25 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 25 occurrencesEocene — about 10 of 25 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 25 occurrencesMiocene — about 7 of 25 occurrencesPliocene — about 1 of 25 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 25 occurrences232–224 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences224–216 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences216–209 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences209–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences185–178 Mya — about 1 occurrence155–147 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences147–139 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences108–100 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences100–93 Mya — about 3 occurrences62–54 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences54–46 Mya — about 2 occurrences39–31 Mya — about 8 occurrences23–15 Mya — about 2 occurrences15–7.7 Mya — about 1 occurrence7.7–0 Mya — about 6 occurrences205.7 Mya129 ka232 Mya0 Mya

25 occurrences of Sialidae 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

25 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.

Found in

4 formations

Argiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°ERedbank Plains — 27.60°S, 152.83°ESharteg — 44.14°N, 95.78°EProtopivka — 49.18°N, 37.05°E

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The named rock units Sialidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 21 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Sialidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Sialidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

2,803 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 23 sites for Sialidae, 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

17 references

Each of the 25 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. 5 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 Sialidae

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Sialidae 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

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 itNothomegaloptera through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leach 1815