Aphaenogaster mayri
Aphaenogaster mayri is an extinct species of ant in formicid subfamily Myrmicinae known from a series of Late Eocene fossils found in North America. A. mayri was one of two Aphaenogaster species described in a 1930 paper by Frank M. Carpenter.

Uncredited · 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
- AphaenogasterPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 3.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 37.71 Mya and 33.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
9 occurrences of Aphaenogaster mayri on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
9 occurrences- Eocene100%
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
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The named rock units Aphaenogaster mayri has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Aphaenogaster mayri and its relatives
EoceneWhere Aphaenogaster mayri and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
484 taxa- Liometopum miocenicum8 sites
- Miomyrmex impactus8 sites
- Protazteca elongata8 sites
- Lasius peritulus7 sites
- Protazteca capitata7 sites
- Protazteca quadrata7 sites
- Dolichoderus antiquus6 sites
- Formica robusta6 sites
- Iridomyrmex5 sites
- Liometopum scudderi5 sites
- Messor draxil5 sites
- Dolichoderus rohweri4 sites
- Elaeomyrmex coloradensis4 sites
- Elaeomyrmex gracilis4 sites
- Bibio wickhami3 sites
- Camponotites petrifactus3 sites
- Cyttaromyia princetoniana3 sites
- Formica cockerelli3 sites
- Geralophus lassatus3 sites
- Miomyrmex striatus3 sites
- Petraeomyrmex minimus3 sites
- Stenus morsei3 sites
- Agabus florissantensis2 sites
- Amara powellii2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Aphaenogaster mayri, 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
1 referenceEach of the 9 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Aphaenogaster mayri
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itAphaenogaster through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Carpenter 1930