Eorpa

Eorpidae is a small family of extinct insects in the scorpionfly order, Mecoptera, which contains a single genus, Eorpa. Three Eocene age species found in Western North America have been placed into the genus: E. elverumi, E. jurgeni, and E. ypsipeda.

Eorpa

Kevmin · 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
EorpidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At most 8 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 56 Mya and 48.07 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Paleocene — about 0 of 13 occurrencesEocene — about 13 of 13 occurrencesEocene56–56 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences56–56 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences56–55 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences55–55 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences55–55 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences55–54 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences54–54 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences54–54 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences54–54 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences54–53 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences53–53 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences53–53 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences53–52 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences52–52 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences52–52 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences52–51 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences51–51 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences51–51 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences51–51 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences51–50 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences50–50 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences50–50 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences50–49 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences49–49 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences49–49 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences49–48 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences48–48 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences48–48 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences56.5 Mya47.6 Mya

13 occurrences of Eorpa 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

13 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

2 formations

Klondike Mountain — 48.66°N, 118.75°WTranquille — 50.13°N, 120.51°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Eorpa has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Eorpa and its relatives

Eocene

Where Eorpa and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

144 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Eorpa, 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

1 reference

Each of the 13 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 Eorpa

Credit
Kevmin
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Eorpa 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 itEorpidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Archibald et al. 2013