Morphna

Robert Walter Campbell Shelford (1872–1912) · Public Domain · via Wikidata/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
- MorphniniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 101 million years on record.
The record covers at least 149.2 Mya to 48.07 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 154.8 Mya to 41.03 Mya.
6 occurrences of Morphna on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. 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
6 occurrences- Late Jurassic33%
- Early Cretaceous17%
- Late Cretaceous17%
- Paleocene17%
- Eocene17%
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
4 formations
- Karabastau Formation2
- Darmakan Formation · Tsagayan Group1
- Kitadani Formation · Tetori Group1
- Messel Formation1
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The named rock units Morphna 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.
Morphna and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Morphna and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
477 taxa- Aktassoblatta fusca2 sites
- Ampliceps dubius2 sites
- Ampliceps furcitibia2 sites
- Anaxyelinae2 sites
- Ano ona2 sites
- Ano si2 sites
- Aposema gigantenna2 sites
- Archirhyphus asiaticus2 sites
- Archizelmira kazachstanica2 sites
- Asioblatta punctata2 sites
- Asvab bavsa2 sites
- Belonotaris (Belonotaris) punctatissimus2 sites
- Blattula brevicaudata2 sites
- Blattula druha2 sites
- Blattula microscopica2 sites
- Blattula rectinervosa2 sites
- Chuanblatta stalosa2 sites
- Codemus micros2 sites
- Codemus synaptoides2 sites
- Decomposita apicata2 sites
- Decomposita basquatirgis2 sites
- Decomposita triocella2 sites
- Distenorrhinus (Distenorrhinus) pallidirostris2 sites
- Eoptychoptera asiatica2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Morphna, 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- Late Mesozoic cockroaches s.l. from the Karabastau Formation in Kazakhstan2
- Appearance of the family Blaberidae (Insecta: Blattaria) during the Cretaceous and a review of fossils of this family2
- New cockroach assemblage from the Lower Cretaceous Kitadani Formation, Fukui, Japan1
- Paleocene origin of the cockroach families Blaberidae and Corydiidae: evidence from Amur River region of Russia1
Each of the 6 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 Morphna
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Robert Walter Campbell Shelford (1872–1912)
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Morphna was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMorphnini through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Shelford 1910