Chrysomelidae
The beetle family Chrysomelidae, commonly known as leaf beetles, includes over 37,000 species in more than 2,500 genera, making it one of the largest and most commonly encountered of all beetle families. Numerous subfamilies are recognized, but the specifics of leaf beetle taxonomy and systematics are likely to change with ongoing research.

Charles J. Sharp · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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- Also called
- leaf beetlePBDB
- Sits inside
- ChrysomeloideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 244 million years on record.
The record covers at least 244.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 245.19 Mya to 0 Mya.
770 occurrences of Chrysomelidae 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
770 occurrences- Middle Triassicunder 1%
- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Early Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
- Late Cretaceousunder 1%
- Paleocene1%
- Eocene26%
- Oligocene7%
- Miocene9%
- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene51%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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
66 formations
- Florissant Formation62
- Uonuma Formation62
- Highbury Silts and Sands Formation34
- Tsubusagawa Formation23
- Upper Freshwater-Molasse Formation20
- Kap København Formation16
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The named rock units Chrysomelidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 42 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 318 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Chrysomelidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Chrysomelidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
5,654 taxa- Carabidae45 sites
- Coleoptera41 sites
- Curculionidae38 sites
- Plateumaris constricticollis37 sites
- Aphodius35 sites
- Staphylinidae30 sites
- Bembidion28 sites
- Pterostichus (Cryobius)28 sites
- Phyllobius26 sites
- Morychus viridis24 sites
- Donaciinae23 sites
- Curtonotus alpinus22 sites
- Stenus22 sites
- Stephanocleonus eruditus21 sites
- Donacia20 sites
- Elateridae20 sites
- Poecilus nearcticus20 sites
- Chrysolina rufilabris19 sites
- Plateumaris19 sites
- Aleocharinae17 sites
- Dytiscidae17 sites
- Ilybius17 sites
- Agabus16 sites
- Hypera ornata16 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 302 sites for Chrysomelidae, and this reads 240 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
163 references- Late Cenozoic insects of northern Eurasia78
- Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene donaciine fossils from the Uonuma Formation in Higashikubiki hills, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, with description of a new species (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Donaciinae)41
- Marine Isotope Stage 9 environments of fluvial deposits at Hackney, north London, UK34
- Beitrag zur Kenntnis der eozänen Arthopodenfauna des Geiseltales33
- New Miocene Coleoptera from Florissant30
- Fossil insects and their paleoenvironments of the Pliocene Tsubusagawa Formation in Ajimu Basin, Oita Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan23
- Middle Pleistocene deposits at Frog Hall Pit, Stretton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire, English Midlands, and their implications for the age of the type Wolstonian23
- Palaeoenvironmental interpretation of Middle and Late Wisconsinan fossil coleopteran assemblages from western Olympic Peninsula, Washington, USA23
- Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene donaciine fossils from the Uonuma Formation (part II): a new Donacia from the Uonuma hills in Niigata Prefecture, Japan (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Donaciinae)21
- Palaeoentomology of the Kap København Formation, a Plio-Pleistocene sequence in Peary Land, North Greenland16
- Heer, 184716
- Late Pleistocene insects from the Mizozono Formation in Yoshimatsu-cho, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan15
Each of the 770 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. 151 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 Chrysomelidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Leaf beetle”
- 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 itChrysomeloidea through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802