Macrocera
Macrocera is a genus of predatory fungus gnats in the family Keroplatidae. There are at least 190 described species in Macrocera.

Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- MacroceriniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 84 million years on record.
The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 15.98 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 106.3 Mya to 13.82 Mya.
17 occurrences of Macrocera 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
17 occurrencesThese 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
7 formations
- Kishenehn Formation2
- Escucha Formation1
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group1
- Rott Formation1
- Randeck Maar Formation1
- Fur Formation1
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The named rock units Macrocera 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.
Macrocera and its relatives
EoceneWhere Macrocera and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
2,424 taxa- Dicranomyia (Dicranomyia) lobata3 sites
- Elephantomyia (Elephantomyia) longirostris3 sites
- Elephantomyia (Elephantomyia) pulchella3 sites
- Macrochile spectrum3 sites
- Mycetobia connexa3 sites
- Palaeopoecilostola longicornis3 sites
- Palaeopoecilostola speciosa3 sites
- Paleotelmatoscopus formosa3 sites
- Prosphyracephala succini3 sites
- Sciaridae3 sites
- Sylvicola splendida3 sites
- Toxorhina (Ceratocheilus) eridanus3 sites
- Acalyptratae2 sites
- Aeshnidae2 sites
- Arctogephyra agilis2 sites
- Berothidae2 sites
- Cheilotrichia (Empeda) pawlowskii2 sites
- Contacyphon2 sites
- Corynoptera2 sites
- Corynoptera klebsii2 sites
- Corynoptera schumanni2 sites
- Dicranomyia (Dicranomyia) graciosa2 sites
- Dicranomyia (Dicranomyia) sinuata2 sites
- Dytiscidae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Macrocera, 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
9 references- Overlooked diversity of the predatory fungus gnat Macrocera in Baltic amber5
- Long story of long antennae: Mesozoic origins of the subfamily Macrocerinae (Diptera: Keroplatidae)3
- Survivors of the extreme: fungus gnats from the PETM recovery interval of the Eocene Fur Formation in Denmark2
- Diptera of the Middle Eocene Kishenehn Formation II2
- New Sciaroidea (Insecta: Diptera) in Lower Cretaceous amber from Spain1
- Neue Dipteren (Nematocera) aus dem Oberoligocan von Rott. 2. Familie Fungivoridae (Pilzmuchen)1
- Versteinerte Honigbienen aus dem obermiocänen Randecker Maar1
- Fossil arthropods in the British Museum - VI. Oligocene insects from Gurnet Bay, Isle of Wight1
- Monographie des Cecidomyidae, des Sciaridae, des Mycetophilidae et des Chironomidae de l'ambre de la Baltique1
Each of the 17 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 content1
Picture of Macrocera
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Macrocera 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Macrocera”
- 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 itMacrocerini through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Meigen 1803