Acrididae

Acrididae are the predominant family of grasshoppers, comprising some 10,000 of the 11,000 species of the entire suborder Caelifera. The Acrididae are best known because all locusts are of the Acrididae. The subfamily Oedipodinae is sometimes classified as a distinct family Oedipodidae in the superfamily Acridoidea. Acrididae grasshoppers are characterized by relatively short and stout antennae, and tympana on the side of the first abdominal segment.

Acrididae

fir0002 flagstaffotos [at] gmail.com Canon 20D + Sigma 150mm f/2.8 · GFDL 1.2 · 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
short-horned grasshopperPBDB
Sits inside
AcridoideaPBDB
Diet
grazer, herbivorePBDB, for Caelifera
Life habit
ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Caelifera
Motility
fast-movingPBDB, for Caelifera
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Caelifera
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Caelifera

Time the record covers

At least 182 million years on record.

The record covers at least 182.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 184.2 Mya to 0 Mya.

Early Jurassic — about 1 of 84 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 84 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 84 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 84 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 84 occurrencesPaleocene — about 2 of 84 occurrencesEocene — about 12 of 84 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 8 of 84 occurrencesMiocene — about 46 of 84 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 3 of 84 occurrencesPleistocene — about 9 of 84 occurrences188–182 Mya — about 1 occurrence63–56 Mya — about 2 occurrences50–44 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences44–38 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences38–31 Mya — about 12 occurrences31–25 Mya — about 4 occurrences25–19 Mya — about 11 occurrences19–13 Mya — about 15 occurrences13–6.3 Mya — about 21 occurrences6.3–0 Mya — about 15 occurrences182.9 Mya11.7 ka188 Mya0 Mya

84 occurrences of Acrididae on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

84 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

12 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°ENiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°EThermalsinterkalk — 48.41°N, 9.55°EShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WMenat — 46.10°N, 2.90°EPosidonia Shale — 52.36°N, 10.75°ESalt — 47.69°N, 7.53°EBuffalo Canyon — 39.20°N, 117.78°WHachiya — 35.48°N, 137.11°EPabdeh — 32.35°N, 50.42°E

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The named rock units Acrididae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 47 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Acrididae and its relatives

Miocene

Where Acrididae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

2,332 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 52 sites for Acrididae, 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

36 references

Each of the 84 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. 24 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 Acrididae

Credit
fir0002 flagstaffotos [at] gmail.com Canon 20D + Sigma 150mm f/2.8
Licence
GFDL 1.2
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itAcridoidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

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