Pseudomyrmecinae
Pseudomyrmecinae is a small subfamily of ants containing three genera of slender, large-eyed arboreal ants, predominantly tropical or subtropical in distribution. In the course of adapting to arboreal conditions, the pseudomyrmecines diversified and came to occupy and retain a much wider geographic range.

April Nobile · CC BY 4.0 · 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
- MyrmeciomorphaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At least 65 million years on record.
The record covers at least 66 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 72.2 Mya to 0 Mya.
57 occurrences of Pseudomyrmecinae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
57 occurrences- Late Cretaceous2%
- Eocene61%
- Oligocene2%
- Miocene30%
- Holocene5%
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
5 formations
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The named rock units Pseudomyrmecinae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 52 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pseudomyrmecinae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Pseudomyrmecinae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
3,501 taxa- Prenolepis henschei15 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi15 sites
- Tetraponera simplex14 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti13 sites
- Formica flori12 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi12 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri12 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea11 sites
- Pachycondyla succinea10 sites
- Plagiolepis klinsmanni10 sites
- Tetraponera ocellata10 sites
- Eocamponotus mengei9 sites
- Plagiolepis kuenowi9 sites
- Bradoponera meieri8 sites
- Dolichoderus tertiarius8 sites
- Formica gustawi8 sites
- Gnamptogenys europaea8 sites
- Monogedania clunipes8 sites
- Yantaromyrmex constrictus8 sites
- Yantaromyrmex samlandicus8 sites
- Brachypogon (Isohelea) prominulus7 sites
- Ceratopogon7 sites
- Ceratopogon forcipiformis7 sites
- Culicoides speciosus7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 28 sites for Pseudomyrmecinae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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
11 references- The ant subfamilies Ponerinae, Cerapachyinae, and Pseudomyrmecinae (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in the late Eocene ambers of Europe17
- Ants of the genus Pseudomyrmex (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Dominican amber, with a synopsis of the extant Antillean species17
- Die Ameisen des baltischen Bernsteins7
- Murav'i (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) Rovenskogo yantarya4
- The Ants of the Baltic Amber4
- A preliminary review of Colombia ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) preserved in copal2
- Les insectes fossiles des terrains oligocènes de France2
- Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) preserved in amber shed light on faunal turnover and ecological roles before the end-Cretaceous extinction1
- The mid-Miocene Zhangpu biota reveals an outstandingly rich rainforest biome in East Asia1
- Fossil ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Middle Eocene Kishenehn Formation1
- The Fossil Ants of North America1
Each of the 57 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 Pseudomyrmecinae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- April Nobile
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pseudomyrmecinae 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.
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 itMyrmeciomorpha through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Smith 1952