Tipulidae
Tipulidae is a family of large crane flies in the order Diptera. There are more than 30 genera and 4,200 described species in Tipulidae, common and widespread throughout the world.

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
- crane flyPBDB
- Sits inside
- TipuloideaPBDB
- 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 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 154.8 Mya to 11.7 ka.
250 occurrences of Tipulidae 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
250 occurrences- Late Jurassic2%
- Early Cretaceous16%
- Late Cretaceousunder 1%
- Paleocene2%
- Eocene54%
- Oligocene13%
- Miocene11%
- Plioceneunder 1%
- Pleistocene2%
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
39 formations
- Florissant Formation49
- Crato Formation · Santana Group27
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group15
- Ølst Formation11
- Green River Formation8
- Renova Formation4
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The named rock units Tipulidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 15 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 77 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tipulidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Tipulidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
4,021 taxa- Coleoptera11 sites
- Tipula11 sites
- Formicidae8 sites
- Bibionidae7 sites
- Diptera7 sites
- Mycetophilidae7 sites
- Curculionidae6 sites
- Lepidoptera6 sites
- Plecia6 sites
- Aphaenogaster mayri5 sites
- Araneae5 sites
- Cydnus brevicollis5 sites
- Entimini5 sites
- Eocamponotus mengei5 sites
- Ichneumonidae5 sites
- Lasius peritulus5 sites
- Liometopum miocenicum5 sites
- Miomyrmex impactus5 sites
- Plecia foersteri5 sites
- Protainophthalmus margarus5 sites
- Protazteca elongata5 sites
- Tipula limfjordensis5 sites
- Aeshnidae4 sites
- Bibio4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 125 sites for Tipulidae, 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
92 references- Tertiary Tipulidae, with special reference to those of Florissant, Colorado30
- Insekten aus der Fur-Formation von Dänemark (Moler, ob. Paleozän/unt. Eozän ?) 4. Tipulidae17
- Crane-flies of the Baltic Amber (Diptera)16
- A cranefly rendezvous: The highest known Mesozoic diversity of Tipulidae (Insecta: Diptera) in the Lower Cretaceous Crato Formation of NE Brazil13
- Les insectes fossiles des terrains oligocènes de France11
- A Report on Some Miocene Diptera from Florissant, Colorado10
- True flies (Insecta: Diptera) from the late Eocene insect limestone (Bembridge Marls) of the Isle of Wight, England, UK7
- New Leptotarsus from the Early Cretaceous of Brazil and Spain: the oldest members of the family Tipulidae (Diptera)6
- Heer, 18496
- New and little known species from the genus Leptotarsus Guerin-Meneville, 1831 (Diptera: Tipulidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of northern Brazil5
- Monographie des Tipulidae et des Dixidae de l'ambre de la Baltique5
- Four new species of the genus Leptotarsus Guérin-Méneville, 1831 (Insecta: Diptera: Tipulidae) from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Formation of Brazil4
Each of the 250 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. 80 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 content2
Picture of Tipulidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Didier Descouens
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
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, “Tipulidae”
- 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 itTipuloidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802