Ponera
Searched as Ponera fuliginosa oeningensis. The Paleobiology Database treats Ponera as the accepted name.
Ponera is a genus of ponerine ants. The name is the Latinized form of the Ancient Greek ponēra.

Gilles San Martin · 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
- PoneriniPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 1.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 12.8 Mya and 11.63 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Ponera 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
2 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
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The named rock units Ponera has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ponera and its relatives
MioceneWhere Ponera and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,250 taxa- Bradoponera meieri6 sites
- Tetraponera simplex6 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi5 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri5 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea5 sites
- Plagiolepis kuenowi5 sites
- Prenolepis henschei5 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi5 sites
- Balticoroma serafinorum4 sites
- Ceratopogon4 sites
- Ceratopogon forcipiformis4 sites
- Ceratopogon hennigi4 sites
- Clostes priscus4 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti4 sites
- Culicoides4 sites
- Culicoides speciosus4 sites
- Eohelea sinuosa4 sites
- Eotemnothorax gracilis4 sites
- Gnamptogenys europaea4 sites
- Monogedania clunipes4 sites
- Pachycondyla succinea4 sites
- Plagiolepis solitaria4 sites
- Prodinapsis succinalis4 sites
- Prosphyracephala succini4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Ponera, 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
1 referenceEach of the 2 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Ponera
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Gilles San Martin
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ponera 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, “Ponera”
- 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 itPonerini through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1804