Anisopodidae

The Anisopodidae are a small cosmopolitan family of gnat-like flies known as wood gnats or window-gnats, with 154 described extant species in 15 genera, and several described fossil taxa. Some species are saprophagous or fungivorous. They are mostly small to medium-sized flies, except the genera Olbiogaster and Lobogaster, which are large with spatulated abdomens. Their phylogenetic placement is controversial. They have been proposed to be the sister group to the higher flies, the Brachycera. Some authors consider this group to be four distinct families – Anisopodidae, Mycetobiidae, Olbiogastridae, and Valeseguyidae.

Anisopodidae

Uncredited · Attribution · 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
wood gnatPBDB
Sits inside
AnisopodoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 232 million years on record.

The record covers at least 245.19 Mya to 12.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 247 Mya to 11.63 Mya.

Early Triassic — about 0 of 104 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 1 of 104 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 104 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 12 of 104 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 4 of 104 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 16 of 104 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 15 of 104 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 5 of 104 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 104 occurrencesEocene — about 41 of 104 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 3 of 104 occurrencesMiocene — about 7 of 104 occurrences252–244 Mya — about 1 occurrence203–195 Mya — about 2 occurrences195–186 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences186–178 Mya — about 10 occurrences178–170 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences170–162 Mya — about 3 occurrences162–154 Mya — about 4 occurrences154–146 Mya — about 8 occurrences146–137 Mya — about 8 occurrences137–129 Mya — about 2 occurrences129–121 Mya — about 1 occurrence121–113 Mya — about 8 occurrences105–97 Mya — about 3 occurrences97–89 Mya — about 2 occurrences64–56 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences56–48 Mya — about 6 occurrences48–40 Mya — about 3 occurrences40–31 Mya — about 33 occurrences31–23 Mya — about 2 occurrences23–15 Mya — about 5 occurrences15–6.9 Mya — about 2 occurrences245.19 Mya12.8 Mya252 Mya7 Mya

104 occurrences of Anisopodidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

104 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

29 formations

Glushkovo — 51.71°N, 116.93°EGlushkovo — 51.92°N, 117.62°ESharteg — 44.14°N, 95.78°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WGurvan-Eren — 46.30°N, 93.80°EGurvan-Eren — 46.38°N, 93.95°ELulworth — 51.08°N, 1.98°WLulworth — 50.60°N, 1.95°WGreen River — 39.46°N, 108.41°WGreen River — 41.55°N, 109.51°WKarabastau — 42.90°N, 70.00°EHuachi-Huanhe — 35.22°N, 106.81°EHuachi-Huanhe — 34.76°N, 107.04°EHaifanggou — 41.85°N, 120.79°EKishenehn — 48.40°N, 113.71°WDaohugou — 41.32°N, 119.24°EArgiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°EItat — 56.17°N, 93.17°ELatah — 46.53°N, 116.79°WCharmouth Mudstone — 50.72°N, 2.95°WDzhil — 42.70°N, 77.20°EGodymboyskaya — 51.63°N, 116.82°ERenova — 45.21°N, 112.18°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ELaiyang — 36.78°N, 120.67°EWadhurst Clay — 51.18°N, 0.27°EHoucheng — 40.83°N, 115.94°EMazantic Shale — 17.15°N, 92.70°WBembridge Marls — 50.75°N, 1.34°W

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The named rock units Anisopodidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 51 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Anisopodidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Anisopodidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

4,017 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 64 sites for Anisopodidae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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

50 references

Each of the 104 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. 38 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 Anisopodidae

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Anisopodidae 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

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 itAnisopodoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Knab 1912