Panorpidium
Panorpidium is an extinct genus of orthopteran insect within the Elcanidae family, described by Westwood in 1854.

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. 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
- ElcaninaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ensifera
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ensifera
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Ensifera
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Ensifera
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ensifera
Time the record covers
At least 100 million years on record.
The record covers at least 201.4 Mya to 100.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 205.7 Mya to 93.9 Mya.
174 occurrences of Panorpidium on record, most of them in the Early Jurassic. 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
174 occurrences- Late Triassic2%
- Early Jurassic73%
- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassic11%
- Early Cretaceous13%
- Late Cretaceous1%
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
15 formations
- Posidonia Shale Formation44
- Solnhofen Formation14
- Crato Formation · Santana Group8
- Weald Clay Formation · Wealden Group5
- Karabastau Formation5
- Insektenmergel Formation5
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The named rock units Panorpidium has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 80 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Panorpidium and its relatives
Early JurassicWhere Panorpidium and its relatives were recorded in the Early Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
3,195 taxa- Cratoelcana zessini8 sites
- Heterophlebia buckmani7 sites
- Insecta7 sites
- Necrotaulius parvulus7 sites
- Aeschnogomphus intermedius6 sites
- Chresmoda obscura6 sites
- Cymatophlebia longialata6 sites
- Ditomoptera dubia6 sites
- Hexagenites cellulosus6 sites
- Isophlebia aspasia6 sites
- Lithoblatta lithophila6 sites
- Mesonepa primordialis6 sites
- Myrmicium schroeteri6 sites
- Pseudohydrophilus avitus6 sites
- Pycnophlebia speciosa6 sites
- Scarabaeides deperditus6 sites
- Tarsophlebia eximia6 sites
- Actea sphinx5 sites
- Caloblattina mathildae5 sites
- Elcana lithophila5 sites
- Eoptychoptera simplex5 sites
- Liadoblattina blakei5 sites
- Mesephemera procera5 sites
- Mesuropetala muensteri5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 62 sites for Panorpidium, 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
28 references- Die Insektenfauna des Ostniedersachsischen Oberen Lias42
- Die Fossilen Insekten und die Phylogenie der Rezenten Formen, parts I-IV32
- Variabilität, Merkmalswandel und Phylogenie der Elcanidae im Jungpaläozoikum und Mesozoikum und die Phylogenie der Ensifera24
- Neue Untersuchungen über die fossilen Insekten mit Ergänzungen und Nachträgen sowie Ausblicken auf phylogenetische, palaeogeographische und allgemein biologische Probleme. II Teil23
- Grasshoppers and crickets (Insecta: Orthoptera) from the Lower Cretaceous of southern England7
- Filogeniya ortopteroidnykh nasekomykh7
- Sistemática dos Ensifera (Insecta, Orthopteroida) da formação Santana, Cretáceo Inferior do Nordeste do Brasil5
- Heer, 18645
- Jurassic insects from Solenhofen in the Carnegie Museum and the Museum of Comparative Zoology4
- Revision of the lagoon crickets (Elcanidae: Insecta: Orthoptera) of the Lower Cretaceous Crato Formation of Brazil with the description of new taxa3
- New Cretaceous Elcanidae from China and Myanmar (Insecta, Orthoptera)2
- Palaeontologie2
Each of the 174 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. 16 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 Panorpidium
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Panorpidium 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, “Panorpidium”
- 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 itElcaninae through timeFormations of the Early JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Westwood 1854