Volume 48, Number 1,
May 2002:
Scorpionflies, Hangingflies, and other Mecoptera

Text-only version

ISSUE HOME PAGE

ABOUT THIS ISSUE
- about KSN
- about the author

IN THIS ISSUE
- The Order Mecoptera
- Fossils
- Modern Species
- Family Panorpidae
- Family Bittacidae
- Family Meropeidae
- Family Panorpodidae
- Family Boreidae
- Key to the Families of North American Mecoptera (Adults)
- References

SLIDESHOW
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Scorpionflies, Hangingflies, and other Mecoptera
by Geroge W. Byers

FOSSILS

Family Panorpidae first appears in the fossil record as two species of Panorpa in the Baltic amber of Oligocene age (about 35 million years ago).  A beautifully preserved panorpid is the more recent Holcorpa maculosa Scudder, of Miocene age, from Florissant, Colorado (photo in Carpenter 1931b, p. 406).

The oldest known species of the Family Bittacidae is Probittacus avitus Martynov, from Jurassic rocks of Turkestan, perhaps 160 million years old.  In North America, an excellent example of fossil Bittacidae is Paleobittacus eocenicus Carpenter, of the Green River formation of Eocene age (see Carpenter 1928, plate 12).