Melolonthinae

Melolonthinae is a subfamily of the scarab beetles. It is a very diverse group; distributed over most of the world, it contains over 11,000 species in over 750 genera. Some authors include the scarab subfamilies Euchirinae and Pachypodinae as tribes in the Melolonthinae.

Melolonthinae

Basile Morin · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
ScarabaeidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 112 million years on record.

The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 121.4 Mya to 129 ka.

Early Cretaceous — about 2 of 45 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 45 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 45 occurrencesEocene — about 22 of 45 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 45 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 13 of 45 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 2 of 45 occurrencesPleistocene — about 5 of 45 occurrences124–120 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences120–116 Mya — about 1 occurrence116–111 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences54–50 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences50–45 Mya — about 3 occurrences45–41 Mya — about 3 occurrences41–37 Mya — about 2 occurrences37–33 Mya — about 13 occurrences29–25 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences25–21 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 3 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 6 occurrences12–8.3 Mya — about 4 occurrences8.3–4.1 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences4.1–0 Mya — about 6 occurrences113.2 Mya774 ka124 Mya0 Mya

45 occurrences of Melolonthinae 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

45 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

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°EHighbury Silts and Sands — 51.56°N, 0.06°WEifel — 50.10°N, 6.84°EGreen River — 39.98°N, 109.11°WGreen River — 39.63°N, 108.15°WShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°ECockfield — 35.68°N, 88.82°WCockfield — 36.37°N, 88.35°WZaza — 53.30°N, 112.09°EFuganji — 35.45°N, 134.29°ECypris — 50.08°N, 12.54°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERita Blanca — 35.71°N, 102.45°WBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°W

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The named rock units Melolonthinae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Melolonthinae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Melolonthinae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

2,118 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 33 sites for Melolonthinae, 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

24 references

Each of the 45 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. 12 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 Melolonthinae

Credit
Basile Morin
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Melolonthinae 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 itScarabaeidae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Leach 1819)