Forficulidae
Forficulidae is a family of earwigs in the order Dermaptera. There are more than 70 genera and more than 500 described species in Forficulidae.

ArtMechanic · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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- Also called
- common earwigPBDB
- Sits inside
- ForficuloideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 46 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 1.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 129 ka.
33 occurrences of Forficulidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
33 occurrences- Eocene48%
- Oligocene18%
- Miocene30%
- Pleistocene3%
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
10 formations
- Shanwang Formation8
- Ølst Formation4
- Florissant Formation3
- Niveau du gypse d'Aix Formation2
- Upper Freshwater-Molasse Formation2
- Rott Formation1
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The named rock units Forficulidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 9 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Forficulidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Forficulidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
1,636 taxa- Forficula paleocaenica6 sites
- Curculionidae4 sites
- Calosoma maderae3 sites
- Camponotites shanwangensis3 sites
- Cerambycidae3 sites
- Dascillus shandongianus3 sites
- Forficula3 sites
- Gerstaeckerus alviolatus3 sites
- Heptagenia3 sites
- Hylobius plenus3 sites
- Limois shanwangensis3 sites
- Acrididae2 sites
- Allodahlia shanwangensis2 sites
- Amphientomum paradoxum2 sites
- Anomala2 sites
- Anomala furva2 sites
- Aphaena lithoecia2 sites
- Aphanus pulchellus2 sites
- Apidae2 sites
- Apis2 sites
- Apis (Synapis) henshawi2 sites
- Apis (Synapis) miocenica2 sites
- Bibio2 sites
- Bibio celasensis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Forficulidae, 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
13 references- Insekten aus der Fur-Formation von Dänemark (Moler, ob. Paleozän/unt. Eozän ?) 2. Dermaptera6
- Zhang, 19896
- Dermaptera (earwigs) preserved in amber, from Prussia5
- Réflexion paléo-entomologique sur la systématique des Dermaptères. Quatre nouveaux forficules fossiles de l'Oligocène de Provence (France)4
- Zhang et al., 19942
- The Tertiary Insects of North America2
- Heer, 18642
- The earwigs (Dermaptera: Forficulidae) from the middle Eocene Eckfeld maar, Germany1
- Two undescribed fossil Dermaptera from Florissant, Colorado1
- Geradflügler und Wasserkäfer der oligocänen Ablagerungen von Rott1
- Les insectes fossiles des terrains oligocènes de France1
- Quelques insectes du Pliocène supérieur du Comté de Durham1
Each of the 33 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. 1 further reference is 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 Forficulidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- ArtMechanic
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Forficulidae 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 itForficuloidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1810