Anacaena
Anacaena is a genus of water scavenger beetles in the subfamily Hydrophilinae. It is an extant genus but there is at least one fossil species.

Udo Schmidt from Deutschland · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- AnacaeniniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 33 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 11.7 ka.
4 occurrences of Anacaena 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
4 occurrences- Eocene25%
- Miocene50%
- Pleistocene25%
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
- Mazantic Shale Formation · Simojovel Group1
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The named rock units Anacaena has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Anacaena and its relatives
MioceneWhere Anacaena and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
842 taxa- Brachypogon (Isohelea)2 sites
- Carabidae2 sites
- Culiseta2 sites
- Forcipomyia (Forcipomyia)2 sites
- Forcipomyia (Lasiohelea)2 sites
- Metopina2 sites
- Solenopsis2 sites
- Abdera (Abdera) hoffeinsorum1 site
- Abdera (Abdera) rikojotensis1 site
- Acamptus exilipes1 site
- Acartophthalmites bicolor1 site
- Acartophthalmites crassipes1 site
- Acartophthalmites luridus1 site
- Acartophthalmites rugosus1 site
- Acartophthalmites scotopteryx1 site
- Acartophthalmites striatus1 site
- Aclypea calva1 site
- Acropyga1 site
- Acropyga glaesaria1 site
- Adinopsis groehni1 site
- Aenigmatias bisetosus1 site
- Aenigmatias primitivus1 site
- Aetheapnomyia hoffeinsorum1 site
- Agabus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Anacaena, 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
4 references- Micro-CT reveals hidden morphology and clarifies the phylogenetic position of Baltic amber water scavenger beetles (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae)1
- An aquatic water scavenger beetle in early Miocene amber from the Dominican Republic (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae)1
- Systematic, palaeoecology, and palaeobiogeography of the insect fauna from Mexican amber1
- Paleogeography of the lower Volga at the end of Atelian time based on entomological and botanical data1
Each of the 4 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 Anacaena
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Udo Schmidt from Deutschland
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Anacaena 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Anacaena”
- 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 itAnacaenini through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Thomson 1859