Geotrupidae

Geotrupidae is a family of beetles in the order Coleoptera. They are commonly called earth-boring dung beetles or dor beetles. Most excavate burrows in which to lay their eggs. They are typically detritivores, provisioning their nests with leaf litter, but are occasionally coprophagous, similar to dung beetles. The eggs are laid in or upon the provision mass and buried, and the developing larvae feed upon the provisions. The burrows of some species can exceed 2 metres in depth.

Geotrupidae

Bruce Marlin · 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
earth-boring dung beetlePBDB
Sits inside
ScarabaeoideaPBDB
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 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 125.77 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Early Cretaceous — about 4 of 26 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 26 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 26 occurrencesEocene — about 4 of 26 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 7 of 26 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 5 of 26 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 26 occurrencesPleistocene — about 6 of 26 occurrences128–124 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences124–120 Mya — about 1 occurrence120–115 Mya — about 2 occurrences115–111 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences51–47 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences47–43 Mya — about 2 occurrences43–38 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences30–26 Mya — about 3 occurrences26–21 Mya — about 4 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 3 occurrences17–13 Mya — about 1 occurrence13–8.6 Mya — about 1 occurrence4.3–0 Mya — about 6 occurrences121.4 Mya129 ka128 Mya0 Mya

26 occurrences of Geotrupidae on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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

26 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

13 formations

Rott — 50.60°N, 7.25°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°EMessel — 49.93°N, 8.75°ENiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°EZaza — 53.30°N, 112.09°EEifel — 50.11°N, 6.82°ETsumori — 32.79°N, 130.86°EYixian — 41.62°N, 120.83°EBushi — 35.84°N, 139.35°EUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°ELaiyang — 36.78°N, 120.67°EMizozono — 31.98°N, 130.74°EMiyajima — 36.98°N, 139.82°E

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The named rock units Geotrupidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Geotrupidae and its relatives

Oligocene

Where Geotrupidae and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.

Found in the same rock

1,636 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Geotrupidae, 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

22 references

Each of the 26 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. 10 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 Geotrupidae

Credit
Bruce Marlin
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Geotrupidae 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 itScarabaeoidea through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802