Dolichopodidae
Dolichopodidae, the long-legged flies, are a large, cosmopolitan family of true flies with more than 8,000 described species in about 250 genera. The genus Dolichopus is the most speciose, with some 600 species.

Muhammad Mahdi Karim · GFDL 1.2 · 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
- long-legged flyPBDB
- Sits inside
- EmpidoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 121 million years on record.
The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 0 Mya.
236 occurrences of Dolichopodidae 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
236 occurrences- Early Cretaceous3%
- Late Cretaceous12%
- Paleoceneunder 1%
- Eocene67%
- Oligocene7%
- Miocene9%
- Plioceneunder 1%
- Pleistoceneunder 1%
- 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
17 formations
- Mazantic Shale Formation · Simojovel Group10
- Rott Formation9
- Kheta Formation5
- Harudi Formation3
- Raritan Formation · Potomac Group2
- Argiles d'lignite du Soissonnais Formation2
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The named rock units Dolichopodidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 193 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dolichopodidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Dolichopodidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
4,053 taxa- Coleoptera7 sites
- Ceratopogonidae6 sites
- Formicidae6 sites
- Mycetophilidae6 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi6 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti5 sites
- Eocamponotus mengei5 sites
- Formica flori5 sites
- Keroplatidae5 sites
- Myrmicinae5 sites
- Diptera4 sites
- Forcipomyia4 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri4 sites
- Palaeomedeterus bifurcatus4 sites
- Prenolepis henschei4 sites
- Psocodea4 sites
- Rhagionidae4 sites
- Tipula4 sites
- Aphididae3 sites
- Arachnida3 sites
- Araneoidea3 sites
- Archiaustroconops ceratoformis3 sites
- Archiaustroconops hamus3 sites
- Archipsocus puber3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 72 sites for Dolichopodidae, and this reads all 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
74 references- The Dolichopodidae (Diptera) of Mexican amber19
- Dolichopodidae (Diptera) from the Eocene amber deposits of Cambay and Kutch basins, India16
- Hong, 200214
- Monographie des Dolichopodidae de l'ambre de la Baltique10
- Neue Dipteren (Brachycera et Cyclorhapha) aus dem Oberoligozän von Rott9
- Monographie des Dolichopodidae de l’ambre de la Baltique, Part 69
- New Cretaceous empidoids and the Mesozoic dance fly revolution (Diptera: Empidoidea)8
- Monographie des Dolichopodidae de l'ambre de la Baltique, Part 98
- Monographie des Dolichopodidae de l'ambre de la Baltique, Part 108
- Monographie des Dolichopodidae de l’ambre de la Baltique, Part 78
- Brachyceran Diptera in Cretaceous ambers and Mesozoic diversification of the Eremoneura7
- Monographie des Dolichopodidae de l'ambre de la Baltique, Part 116
Each of the 236 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. 62 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 Dolichopodidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Muhammad Mahdi Karim
- Licence
- GFDL 1.2
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dolichopodidae 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
- 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 itEmpidoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1809