Contacyphon
Contacyphon is a genus of marsh beetles in the family Scirtidae. There are over 100 described species in Contacyphon, all of which were formerly treated under the deprecated name Cyphon, which was recognized as an objectively invalid name.

xpda · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- ScirtinaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 47 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 11.7 ka.
23 occurrences of Contacyphon 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
23 occurrences- Eocene91%
- Pleistocene9%
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
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group6
- Argiles d'lignite du Soissonnais Formation2
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Contacyphon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 15 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Contacyphon and its relatives
EoceneWhere Contacyphon and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,601 taxa- Stenus4 sites
- Aeolothrips jarzembowskii3 sites
- Anglogomphaeschna eocenica3 sites
- Aphidoidea3 sites
- Archaea paradoxa3 sites
- Beraeodes vectensis3 sites
- Berosus barclayi3 sites
- Camponotites cockerelli3 sites
- Chironomidae3 sites
- Chironomini3 sites
- Cicadellidae3 sites
- Colopha incognita3 sites
- Culex protorhinus3 sites
- Cupes rohdendorfi3 sites
- Dicranomyia (Dicranomyia) brodiei3 sites
- Dryinus janzeni3 sites
- Emplastus britannicus3 sites
- Emplastus hypolithus3 sites
- Gonomyia (Gonomyia) indecisa3 sites
- Gymnastes (Paragymnastes) fasciatipennis3 sites
- Hydrochara woodwardi3 sites
- Hydroporinae3 sites
- Ichneumonidae3 sites
- Lepidoptera3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Contacyphon, 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
8 references- The beetle (Coleoptera) fauna of the Insect Limestone (late Eocene), Isle of Wight, southern England6
- Neue Arten der Scirtidae (Coleoptera) aus Baltischem Bernstein (Teil 2)4
- Neue Arten der Familie Scirtidae (Coleoptera) aus Baltischem Bernstein (Teil 1)4
- Predstaviteli semeystva Helodidae (Coleoptera) iz baltiyskogo yantarya3
- Environmental interpretation of fossil insect assemblages from MIS 5 at Ziegler Reservoir, Snowmass Village, Colorado2
- New beetles of the suborder Polyphaga from the lowermost Eocene French amber (Insecta: Coleoptera)2
- New extinct Eocene Coleoptera in Baltic amber of Friedhelm Eichmann's collection (Germany)1
- Zur Taxonomie und Ökologie der Schlammkäfer des Baltischen Bernsteins mit einem Gattungsschlüssel und der Beschreibung einer neuen Art (Coleoptera: Scirtidae)1
Each of the 23 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 Contacyphon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- xpda
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Contacyphon 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, “Contacyphon”
- 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 itScirtinae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Des Gozis 1886