Cleridae

Cleridae are a family of beetles of the superfamily Cleroidea. They are commonly known as checkered beetles. The family Cleridae has a worldwide distribution, and a variety of habitats and feeding preferences.

Cleridae

J.O.Westwood · Public Domain · 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
checkered beetlePBDB
Sits inside
CleroideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 154 million years on record.

The record covers at least 154.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 165.3 Mya to 0 Mya.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 51 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 1 of 51 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 51 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 2 of 51 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 51 occurrencesEocene — about 30 of 51 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 51 occurrencesMiocene — about 7 of 51 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 51 occurrencesPleistocene — about 3 of 51 occurrences169–163 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences163–157 Mya — about 1 occurrence157–152 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences101–96 Mya — about 2 occurrences96–90 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences62–56 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences56–51 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences51–45 Mya — about 2 occurrences45–39 Mya — about 2 occurrences39–34 Mya — about 26 occurrences34–28 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences28–22 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences22–17 Mya — about 5 occurrences17–11 Mya — about 2 occurrences5.6–0 Mya — about 8 occurrences154.8 Mya11.7 ka169 Mya0 Mya

51 occurrences of Cleridae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

51 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

9 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°EEifel — 50.11°N, 6.82°EDaohugou — 41.32°N, 119.24°EUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°ESalt — 47.69°N, 7.53°EMaíz Gordo — 23.53°S, 64.73°WOler — 69.50°N, 158.50°EDolgan — 70.17°N, 86.82°E

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The named rock units Cleridae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 30 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Cleridae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Cleridae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

2,833 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 33 sites for Cleridae, 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

30 references

Each of the 51 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. 18 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 Cleridae

Credit
J.O.Westwood
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Cleridae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itCleroidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802