Mordellistena
Mordellistena is a genus of tumbling flower beetles in the family Mordellidae. There are more than 450 described species in Mordellistena, found worldwide.

Didier Descouens · 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- Sits inside
- MordellisteniniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 33 million years on record.
The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 11.7 ka.
4 occurrences of Mordellistena on record. 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
4 occurrences- Eocene50%
- Pleistocene50%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Mordellistena has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
259 taxa- Aleocharinae2 sites
- Aphodius2 sites
- Hydraena2 sites
- Oxytelus laqueatus2 sites
- Stenus2 sites
- Aberrokorynetes oceanojubilaei1 site
- Acanthoglyptus picollus1 site
- Acritus (Acritus) sutirca1 site
- Adelocera murina1 site
- Aedes (Finlaya) serafini1 site
- Aegialia (Psammoporus) opaca1 site
- Agabus (Acatodes) infuscatus1 site
- Agonum muelleri1 site
- Agrilus1 site
- Agrilus liragus1 site
- Agriotes apicalis1 site
- Amara bifrons1 site
- Anobium punctatum1 site
- Anotylus rugosus1 site
- Anthicus1 site
- Anthonomus1 site
- Anthrenus (Nathrenus) electron1 site
- Aphodius carpetanus1 site
- Aphodius conspurcatus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Mordellistena, 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
4 references- A new species of tumbling fower beetle (Coleoptera: Mordellidae) from Baltic amber1
- Environmental interpretation of fossil insect assemblages from MIS 5 at Ziegler Reservoir, Snowmass Village, Colorado1
- Marine Isotope Stage 9 environments of fluvial deposits at Hackney, north London, UK1
- A report on some recent collections of fossil Coleoptera from the Miocene shales of Florissant1
Each of the 4 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 Mordellistena
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Didier Descouens
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mordellistena was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource was 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 itMordellistenini through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Costa 1854