Macromiidae
Macromiidae is a family of dragonflies. The family contains species known as cruisers or skimmers. They are known to fly over bodies of water and roads. They are similar to Aeshnidae in size, but with green eyes that barely meet at the top of their head.

Ted Lee Eubanks, Jr./FERMATA Inc. · Attribution · 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
- LibelluloideaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, insectivorePBDB, for Odonata
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Odonata
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Odonata
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Odonata
- Environment
- freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Odonata
Time the record covers
At least 22 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 129 ka.
7 occurrences of Macromiidae on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
7 occurrences- Oligocene14%
- Miocene71%
- Pleistocene14%
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
3 formations
- Shanwang Formation4
- Latah Formation1
- Miyajima Formation · Shiobara Group1
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The named rock units Macromiidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Macromiidae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Macromiidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
260 taxa- Dascillus shandongianus3 sites
- Gerstaeckerus alviolatus3 sites
- Limois shanwangensis3 sites
- Allodahlia shanwangensis2 sites
- Anomala furva2 sites
- Bibio shanwangensis2 sites
- Bibio tranopterus2 sites
- Bibio varineurus2 sites
- Calosoma maderae2 sites
- Camponotites ambon2 sites
- Camponotites shanwangensis2 sites
- Dascillus flatus2 sites
- Dolichoderus lacinius2 sites
- Epiaeschna lucida2 sites
- Formica2 sites
- Formica ovala2 sites
- Heptagenia2 sites
- Hylobius plenus2 sites
- Laccotrephes robustus2 sites
- Macromia2 sites
- Plecia villosa2 sites
- Abia maculosa1 site
- Adoretus recticlypeus1 site
- Aeshna ignivora1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Macromiidae, 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
5 references- Zhang, 19893
- Fossil dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera) from the late Oligocene Fossil-Lagerstätte Enspel (Rhineland-Palatinate, SW Germany)1
- Insecta1
- Fossil insects of the Latah Formation (Miocene) of eastern Washington and northern Idaho1
- On a fossil dragonfly wing from the Pleistocene of Shiobara, central Japan1
Each of the 7 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 Macromiidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ted Lee Eubanks, Jr./FERMATA Inc.
- Licence
- Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Macromiidae 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, “Macromiidae”
- 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 itLibelluloidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Tillyard 1917)