Aulacidae

The Aulacidae are a small, cosmopolitan family of wasps, with two extant genera containing some 200 known species. They are primarily endoparasitoids of wood wasps (Xiphydriidae) and xylophagous beetles. They are closely related to the family Gasteruptiidae, sharing the feature of having the first and second metasomal tergites fused, and having the head on a long pronotal "neck", though they are not nearly as slender and elongate as gasteruptiids, nor are their hind legs club-like, and they have more sculptured thoraces. They share the evanioid trait of having the metasoma attached very high above the hind coxae on the propodeum.

Aulacidae

DavidFrancis34 from Australia · 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
EuaulacidesPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 105 million years on record.

The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 5.333 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 29 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 16 of 29 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 29 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 10 of 29 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 29 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 29 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 29 occurrences122–118 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences118–114 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences114–110 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences102–98 Mya — about 6 occurrences98–94 Mya — about 10 occurrences94–90 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences62–58 Mya — about 1 occurrence58–55 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences55–51 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences51–47 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences39–35 Mya — about 7 occurrences35–31 Mya — about 2 occurrences11–7.0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences7.0–3.0 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences113.2 Mya7.246 Mya122 Mya3 Mya

29 occurrences of Aulacidae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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

29 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

3 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WArgiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°EMenat — 46.10°N, 2.90°E

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The named rock units Aulacidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 23 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Aulacidae and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Aulacidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

2,054 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Aulacidae, 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

18 references

Each of the 29 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. 6 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 Aulacidae

Credit
DavidFrancis34 from Australia
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Aulacidae 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 itEuaulacides through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Shuckard 1841