Orthemis

Orthemis is a genus of large Neotropical dragonflies, commonly called Tropical King Skimmers. The males are generally red and the females brown.

Orthemis

Vitaly_Charny ( talk ) ( Uploads ) · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
Also called
tropical king skimmerPBDB
Sits inside
LibellulinaePBDB
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 most 2.2 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 18.5 Mya and 16.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Miocene — about 5 of 5 occurrencesMiocene19–18 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences17–16 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences19 Mya15.8 Mya

5 occurrences of Orthemis 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

5 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

1 formation

Barstow — 34.95°N, 116.83°WBarstow — 34.94°N, 116.83°W

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The named rock units Orthemis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Orthemis and its relatives

Miocene

Where Orthemis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

35 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Orthemis, 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

2 references

Each of the 5 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Orthemis

Credit
Vitaly_Charny ( talk ) ( Uploads )
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
James
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itLibellulinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hagen 1861