Sphyrotheca
Sphyrotheca is a genus of globular springtails in the family Sminthuridae. There are seven described species in Sphyrotheca.

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. 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
- SphyrothecinaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Collembola
Time the record covers
At most 6.7 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 20.45 Mya and 13.82 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Sphyrotheca on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
3 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Sphyrotheca has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Sphyrotheca and its relatives
MioceneWhere Sphyrotheca and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
94 taxa- Desoria2 sites
- Lepidocyrtus2 sites
- Pseudosinella2 sites
- Salina2 sites
- Acrocyrtus1 site
- Aenictus1 site
- Amphinemura himberii1 site
- Anochetus1 site
- Anomodon1 site
- Aphaenogaster1 site
- Archipsocus palaeosinicus1 site
- Atoposega rosai1 site
- Austroplebeia (Anteplebeina) fujianica1 site
- Belaphotroctes grimaldii1 site
- Borinquena parva1 site
- Brachyponera1 site
- Callyntrura1 site
- Camponotus1 site
- Cardiocondyla1 site
- Carebara1 site
- Cataulacus1 site
- Cerapachys1 site
- Circulifolium1 site
- Colobopsis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Sphyrotheca, 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
3 references- The mid-Miocene Zhangpu biota reveals an outstandingly rich rainforest biome in East Asia1
- Ancient Ephemeroptera-Collembola symbiosis fossilized in amber predicts contemporary phoretic associations1
- Collembola in amber from the Dominican Republic1
Each of the 3 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. 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 Sphyrotheca
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Sphyrotheca 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, “Sphyrotheca”
- 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 itSphyrothecinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Borner 1906