Dinopanorpa
Dinopanorpa is an extinct monotypic genus of scorpionfly that contains the single species Dinopanorpa megarche and is the type genus of the extinct family Dinopanorpidae. The genus is known from a single hindwing specimen, the holotype, currently deposited in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, as number "69173", and which was first described by Dr Theodore D.A. Cockerell in 1924. The name is a combination of the Greek deino meaning "terrible" or "monstrous" and "Panorpa", the type genus of Panorpidae the family in which Dinopanorpa was first placed.

Cockerell, TDA · 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- Sits inside
- DinopanorpidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 14 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 33.9 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 27.3 Mya.
2 occurrences of Dinopanorpa on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
2 occurrencesThese 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
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Dinopanorpa has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Dinopanorpa and its relatives
EoceneWhere Dinopanorpa and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
11 taxa- Amagua fortis1 site
- Archibaldia aristovi1 site
- Asiachrysa tadushiella1 site
- Cretotanaos bontsaganensis1 site
- Crusopimpla tadushiensis1 site
- Dolichomitus saxeus1 site
- Eomerope1 site
- Eomerope asiatica1 site
- Exechiites tadushensis1 site
- Hemerobiidae1 site
- Mycomyites tadushensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Dinopanorpa, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- New Dinopanorpidae (Insecta: Mecoptera) from the Eocene Okanagan Highlands (British Columbia, Canada and Washington State, USA)1
- Fossil insects in the United States National Museum1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Dinopanorpa
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Cockerell, TDA
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dinopanorpa 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Dinopanorpa”
- 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 itDinopanorpidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cockerell 1925