Atheta
Atheta is a genus of rove beetles in the family Staphylinidae. There are more than 640 described species in the genus Atheta.

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
- AthetinaPBDB
- 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.
6 occurrences of Atheta 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
6 occurrences- Eocene33%
- Pleistocene67%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Atheta 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.
Atheta and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Atheta and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
592 taxa- Aleocharinae4 sites
- Corticaria4 sites
- Limnephilidae4 sites
- Aphodius3 sites
- Bembidion3 sites
- Curculionidae3 sites
- Pterostichus3 sites
- Pycnoglypta lurida3 sites
- Scolytus piceae3 sites
- Stenus3 sites
- Tachinus elongatus3 sites
- Tipula3 sites
- Aegialia (Psammoporus) terminalis2 sites
- Agabini2 sites
- Agabus (Acatodes) anthracinus2 sites
- Agabus (Acatodes) infuscatus2 sites
- Agabus (Gaurodytes) affinis2 sites
- Agonum2 sites
- Amara2 sites
- Anoplus plantaris2 sites
- Apatania crymophila2 sites
- Apatania nigra2 sites
- Arctobyrrhus subcanus2 sites
- Arctopsyche ladogensis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Atheta, 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- 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
- Fossils of Staphylinidae from Baltic amber: a new genus and three new species (Insecta, Coleoptera, Staphylinidae)1
- Fossil Coleoptera from the Wilson Ranch near Florissant, Colorado1
Each of the 6 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 Atheta
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Udo Schmidt from Deutschland
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Atheta 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Atheta”
- 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 itAthetina through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Thomson 1858