Ptiliidae

Ptiliidae is a family of very tiny beetles with a cosmopolitan distribution. They are colloquially called featherwing beetles, because the hindwings are narrow and feathery.

Ptiliidae

Udo Schmidt from Deutschland · 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
Also called
feather-winged beetlePBDB
Sits inside
StaphylinoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 93 million years on record.

The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 28 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 3 of 28 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 28 occurrencesEocene — about 7 of 28 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 28 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 2 of 28 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 28 occurrencesPleistocene — about 15 of 28 occurrences103–99 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences99–96 Mya — about 2 occurrences96–92 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences51–48 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences48–44 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences44–41 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences41–38 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences38–34 Mya — about 4 occurrences34–31 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences27–24 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences24–21 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences10–6.8 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences6.8–3.4 Mya — about 2 occurrences3.4–0 Mya — about 15 occurrences93.9 Mya129 ka103 Mya0 Mya

28 occurrences of Ptiliidae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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

28 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

4 formations

Highbury Silts and Sands — 51.56°N, 0.06°WImuruk Volcanics — 65.88°N, 163.13°WKishenehn — 48.39°N, 113.70°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°E

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The named rock units Ptiliidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 18 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Ptiliidae and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Ptiliidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

2,226 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 25 sites for Ptiliidae, 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

12 references

Each of the 28 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 Ptiliidae

Credit
Udo Schmidt from Deutschland
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ptiliidae 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 itStaphylinoidea through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Erichson 1845