Messor
Messor is a genus of myrmicine ants with more than 100 species, all of which are harvester ants; the generic name comes from the Roman god of crops and harvest, Messor. The subterranean colonies tend to be found in open fields and near roadsides, openings are directly to the surface.
Álvaro Rodríguez · CC BY-SA 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
- StenamminiPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 26 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 7.246 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 5.333 Mya.
8 occurrences of Messor on record. 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
8 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
3 formations
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The named rock units Messor has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
281 taxa- Aphaenogaster mayri5 sites
- Lasius peritulus5 sites
- Liometopum miocenicum5 sites
- Miomyrmex impactus5 sites
- Protazteca capitata5 sites
- Protazteca elongata5 sites
- Protazteca quadrata5 sites
- Elaeomyrmex coloradensis4 sites
- Formica robusta4 sites
- Iridomyrmex4 sites
- Liometopum scudderi4 sites
- Cyttaromyia princetoniana3 sites
- Dolichoderus antiquus3 sites
- Elaeomyrmex gracilis3 sites
- Formica cockerelli3 sites
- Miomyrmex striatus3 sites
- Petraeomyrmex minimus3 sites
- Byrrhus romingeri2 sites
- Camponotites fuscipennis2 sites
- Camponotites petrifactus2 sites
- Carabidae2 sites
- Cleonini2 sites
- Dolichoderus rohweri2 sites
- Geralophus fossicius2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Messor, 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
3 references- The Fossil Ants of North America6
- Insects from the upper Miocene Grubstake Formation of Alaska1
- Entomofauna from Miocene deposits near Juliaetta, Idaho1
Each of the 8 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 Messor
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Álvaro Rodríguez
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Messor 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, “Messor”
- 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 itStenammini through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Forel 1890