Epicauta

Epicauta is a genus of beetles in the blister beetle family, Meloidae. The genus was first scientifically described in 1834 by Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean. Epicauta is distributed nearly worldwide, with species native to all continents except Australia and Antarctica. Surveys have found the genus to be particularly diverse in northern Arizona in the United States. Few species occur in the Arctic, with none farther north than the southern edge of the Northwest Territories, Canada.

Epicauta

Uncredited · 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
EpicautiniPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 29 million years on record.

The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 4.7 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37 Mya to 1.4 Mya.

Eocene — about 1 of 4 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 4 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 2 of 4 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 4 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences35–34 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences34–33 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences22–20 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences17–15 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences5.6–4.4 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences4.4–3.2 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences3.2–1.9 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.9–688 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences33.9 Mya4.7 Mya37.7 Mya688 ka

4 occurrences of Epicauta on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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

4 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

4 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°EAtotonilco El Grande — 20.30°N, 98.71°WRita Blanca — 35.71°N, 102.45°W

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The named rock units Epicauta has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Epicauta and its relatives

Pliocene

Where Epicauta and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.

Found in the same rock

142 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Epicauta, 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

4 references

Each of the 4 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 content2

Picture of Epicauta

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

Photogrammetry

Licence
In Copyright
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Epicauta sp. · VPI:VTEC:VTEC000004849

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 itEpicautini through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Dejean 1834