Thanatophilus
Thanatophilus is a genus of carrion beetles in the family Silphidae. There are about 12 described species in Thanatophilus.

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- Sits inside
- SilphiniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 0 Mya.
19 occurrences of Thanatophilus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
19 occurrences- Eocene1%
- Oligocene4%
- Miocene5%
- Pleistocene84%
- Holocene5%
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
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The named rock units Thanatophilus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Thanatophilus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Thanatophilus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
753 taxa- Bembidion14 sites
- Stenus11 sites
- Aphodius7 sites
- Bledius7 sites
- Elateridae7 sites
- Helophorus7 sites
- Agabus6 sites
- Aleocharinae6 sites
- Catops6 sites
- Dyschirius6 sites
- Hydroporus6 sites
- Olophrum consimile6 sites
- Patrobus stygicus6 sites
- Pterostichus6 sites
- Pterostichus (Cryobius)6 sites
- Quedius6 sites
- Tachinus6 sites
- Amara5 sites
- Blethisa catenaria5 sites
- Carabidae5 sites
- Elaphrus lapponicus5 sites
- Eucnecosum5 sites
- Eucnecosum brunnescens5 sites
- Hydrobius fuscipes5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 19 sites for Thanatophilus, 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
10 references- Late Cenozoic insects of northern Eurasia3
- Fossil Beetle Evidence for a Short Warm Interval near 40,000 yr B.P. at Titusville, Pennsylvania3
- Fossil arthropods of California 17. The silphid burying beetles in the asphalt deposits3
- The paleoenvironment of the Olympia beds based on fossil beetles from Discovery Park, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.2
- Environmental interpretation of fossil insect assemblages from MIS 5 at Ziegler Reservoir, Snowmass Village, Colorado2
- Palaeoentomology of the Kap København Formation, a Plio-Pleistocene sequence in Peary Land, North Greenland2
- Carrion beetles (Coleoptera, Silphidae) in Younger Dryas of Chick River (Late Pleistocene of Siberia)1
- Palaeoenvironmental interpretation of Middle and Late Wisconsinan fossil coleopteran assemblages from western Olympic Peninsula, Washington, USA1
- A Late Pleistocene fauna and flora from Upton Warren, Worcestershire1
- Insekten aus den Phosphoriten des Quercy1
Each of the 19 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 Thanatophilus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- xpda
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Thanatophilus 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 itSilphini through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Leach 1815)