Tetratomidae
Tetratomidae is a small family of beetles sometimes called polypore fungus beetles. The family consists of several genera, most of which used to be in the family Melandryidae. Tetratomidae can be found worldwide.

xpda · 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
- polypore fungus beetlePBDB
- Sits inside
- TenebrionoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 109 million years on record.
The record covers at least 110.1 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 113.2 Mya to 11.7 ka.
12 occurrences of Tetratomidae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
12 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
2 formations
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The named rock units Tetratomidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tetratomidae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Tetratomidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
2,115 taxa- Attagenus hoffeinsorum3 sites
- Electrolotis hoffeinsorum3 sites
- Quasicalathus elpis3 sites
- Ansoberotha jiewenae2 sites
- Anthrenus (Nathrenus) ambericus2 sites
- Archaeonebria inexspectata2 sites
- Arctogephyra agilis2 sites
- Balticophasma2 sites
- Balticoroma serafinorum2 sites
- Baltocar subnudus2 sites
- Baltosidis szadziewskii2 sites
- Burmacateres longicoxa2 sites
- Burmempheria densuschaetae2 sites
- Burmempheria raruschaetae2 sites
- Burmocoleus zhiyuani2 sites
- Burmomerope clara2 sites
- Chauliodes carsteni2 sites
- Cheilotrichia (Empeda) pawlowskii2 sites
- Contacyphon keilbachi2 sites
- Corneliola avia2 sites
- Crepidodera tertiotertiaria2 sites
- Cretolenax carinatus2 sites
- Cupes groehni2 sites
- Cupes rohdendorfi2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Tetratomidae, 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
12 references- Cretaceous amber of Ecuador unveils new insights into South America’s Gondwanan forests1
- A new tribe, genus and species of the tenebrionid subfamily Lagriinae (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) from the Eocene Baltic amber1
- Eustrophus praecursor sp. nov.: the first Eocene species of Eustrophinae (Coleoptera: Tetratomidae) from Baltic amber1
- A new genus of Hallomeninae Gistel, 1848 (Coleoptera: Tenebrionoidea: Tetratomidae) from Eocene Baltic amber1
- Taxonomic notes on Eustrophinae from the mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber, with description of a new species (Coleoptera, Tetratomidae)1
- Allostrophus cretaceus gen. et sp. nov.: A new polypore fungus beetle (Coleoptera, Tetratomidae) from the Cretaceous Myanmar amber1
- A new genus and species of polypore fungus beetle in Upper Cretaceous Burmese amber (Coleoptera, Tetratomidae, Eustrophinae)1
- A new Late Cretaceous genus and species of polypore fungus beetles (Coleoptera, Tetratomidae) from northern Myanmar1
- Environmental interpretation of fossil insect assemblages from MIS 5 at Ziegler Reservoir, Snowmass Village, Colorado1
- First fossil record of polypore fungus beetles from Lower Cretaceous amber of France1
- The first species of the family Tetratomidae (Coleoptera: Cucujiformia: Tenebrionoidea) from Baltic amber1
- Two new genera of the Melandryidae (Coleoptera) from the Upper Cretaceous1
Each of the 12 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 Tetratomidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- xpda
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Tetratomidae 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 itTenebrionoidea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Billberg 1820)