Dolichoderus tertiarius
Dolichoderus tertiarius is an extinct species of Eocene ant in the genus Dolichoderus. Described by Mayr in 1868, fossils of a worker, queen and male were discovered and described in the Baltic amber.

Vincent Perrichot · CC BY 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
- DolichoderusPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 3.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 37.71 Mya and 33.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
12 occurrences of Dolichoderus tertiarius 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
12 occurrences- Eocene100%
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.
Dolichoderus tertiarius and its relatives
EoceneWhere Dolichoderus tertiarius and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
2,304 taxa- Formica flori12 sites
- Prenolepis henschei11 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi11 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti10 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri10 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi9 sites
- Eocamponotus mengei8 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea7 sites
- Oecophylla brischkei7 sites
- Dolichoderus cornutus6 sites
- Dolichoderus sculpturatus6 sites
- Pachycondyla succinea6 sites
- Plagiolepis klinsmanni6 sites
- Tetraponera ocellata6 sites
- Tetraponera simplex6 sites
- Trichoneura (Trichoneura) gracilistylus6 sites
- Trichoneura (Trichoneura) vulgaris6 sites
- Yantaromyrmex constrictus6 sites
- Cataglyphoides constricta5 sites
- Dolichoderus balticus5 sites
- Enneamerus reticulatus5 sites
- Erotesis aequalis5 sites
- Holocentropus affinis5 sites
- Holocentropus atratus5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Dolichoderus tertiarius, 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
3 references- Die Ameisen des baltischen Bernsteins7
- Ants of the genus Dolichoderus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from the Baltic and Rovno ambers3
- The Ants of the Baltic Amber2
Each of the 12 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Dolichoderus tertiarius
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Vincent Perrichot
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- 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
- 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 itDolichoderus through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Mayr 1868)