Sphecidae

The Sphecidae are a cosmopolitan family of wasps of the suborder Apocrita that includes sand wasps, mud daubers, and other thread-waisted wasps.

Sphecidae

Ivar Leidus · 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
digger waspPBDB
Sits inside
ApoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 131 million years on record.

The record covers at least 139.1 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 141 Mya to 5.333 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 0 of 20 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 4 of 20 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 20 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 20 occurrencesEocene — about 7 of 20 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 2 of 20 occurrencesMiocene — about 6 of 20 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 20 occurrences144–139 Mya — about 1 occurrence134–130 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences130–125 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences125–120 Mya — about 2 occurrences101–97 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences97–92 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences59–54 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences54–50 Mya — about 1 occurrence50–45 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences45–40 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences40–36 Mya — about 2 occurrences36–31 Mya — about 2 occurrences31–26 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences26–21 Mya — about 2 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 3 occurrences12–7.3 Mya — about 1 occurrence7.3–2.6 Mya — about 1 occurrence139.1 Mya7.246 Mya144 Mya3 Mya

20 occurrences of Sphecidae 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

20 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

11 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°Wla Pedrera de Rubies — 42.01°N, 0.96°EUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°EWeald Clay — 52.72°N, 1.44°WNiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°ELulworth — 51.08°N, 1.98°WBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EThermalsinterkalk — 48.41°N, 9.55°EMessel — 49.93°N, 8.75°EKlondike Mountain — 48.66°N, 118.75°W

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The named rock units Sphecidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Sphecidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Sphecidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

1,251 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Sphecidae, 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

16 references

Each of the 20 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. 4 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 Sphecidae

Credit
Ivar Leidus
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Sphecidae 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 itApoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802