Tenebrionidae

Darkling beetle is the common name for members of the beetle family Tenebrionidae, comprising over 20,000 species in a cosmopolitan distribution.

Tenebrionidae

Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 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
Also called
darkling beetlePBDB
Sits inside
TenebrionoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 149 million years on record.

The record covers at least 149.2 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 154.8 Mya to 0 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 1 of 234 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 4 of 234 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 234 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 9 of 234 occurrencesEocene — about 75 of 234 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 8 of 234 occurrencesMiocene — about 50 of 234 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 12 of 234 occurrencesPleistocene — about 67 of 234 occurrences158–153 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences153–147 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences126–121 Mya — about 3 occurrences121–116 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences116–111 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences105–100 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences100–95 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences95–89 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences74–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–63 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences63–58 Mya — about 8 occurrences58–53 Mya — about 2 occurrences53–47 Mya — about 5 occurrences47–42 Mya — about 26 occurrences42–37 Mya — about 12 occurrences37–32 Mya — about 33 occurrences32–26 Mya — about 2 occurrences26–21 Mya — about 8 occurrences21–16 Mya — about 31 occurrences16–11 Mya — about 15 occurrences11–5.3 Mya — about 3 occurrences5.3–0 Mya — about 85 occurrences149.2 Mya11.7 ka158 Mya0 Mya

234 occurrences of Tenebrionidae 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

234 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

24 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WFlorissant — 38.93°N, 105.24°WMessel — 49.93°N, 8.75°EShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°ERott — 50.75°N, 7.26°ERott — 50.60°N, 7.25°EMenat — 46.10°N, 2.90°EUpper Laetolil Beds — 3.21°S, 35.21°EUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°EYixian — 41.75°N, 120.80°EYixian — 41.62°N, 120.83°ELuján — 35.74°S, 58.50°WEifel — 50.11°N, 6.82°EMotojuku — 36.20°N, 138.63°EMaíz Gordo — 23.53°S, 65.02°WArgiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°EAllenby — 49.37°N, 120.59°WKarabastau — 42.90°N, 70.00°EHydrobienkalk — 50.04°N, 8.24°EPoole — 50.67°N, 2.09°WAtanikerluk — 70.43°N, 54.77°WTogo — 31.89°N, 130.36°EHighbury Silts and Sands — 51.56°N, 0.06°WPaskapoo — 52.35°N, 113.76°WCrato — 7.13°S, 39.70°WNagano — 31.91°N, 130.59°EIsarizawa — 39.49°N, 140.97°E

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The named rock units Tenebrionidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 162 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Tenebrionidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Tenebrionidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

4,287 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 95 sites for Tenebrionidae, 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

91 references

Each of the 234 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. 79 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 Tenebrionidae

Credit
Didier Descouens
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Tenebrionidae 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 itTenebrionoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802