Show Us Your Fossil... Butterflies?

[Fossilcollector]

Hi everyone,

Just checking to see if anyone else out there has been working on collecting fossil lepidoptera: Moths and butterflies.

Fossil moth or butterfly from the green river fm.

Another one from the green river formation.

True butterfly wings in dominican amber.

This is a butterfly from the Florissant formation. Used to be in my collection but I donated it to a museum.

Btw, all the pieces are available for study and deposit into a proper museum collection (in case any paleo-lepidopterists stumble onto this page).

-YvW

Edited April 1, 2010 by veomega

[pleecan]

Some examples....

[Nicholas]

Those are pretty cool, I've not really thought much about them as fossils. That amber specimen with the wings is exceptional!

[Auspex]

Some examples....

Your first one resembles a modern Sphinx moth; where is it from?

[HeritageFossils]

@pleecan: Your specimens are actually ephemeroptera, mayflies, with the first couple being of one from the cretaceous Crato of brazil and the last one being from early cretaceous of liaoning, china. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayfly

Lepidoptera emerged in the Jurassic but only 2 sets of wings have been found, and only 13 sets from the Cretaceous. These early ones are only identified based on the scaled wings and look nothing like moths or butterflies. They didn't really expand until the Eocene.

-YvW

PS: Just being accurate with ID, I hope I don't come off as rude!

Edited April 1, 2010 by HeritageFossils

[MikeD]

Your first one resembles a modern Sphinx moth; where is it from?

That's what I was thinking. Very cool, all of them

[pleecan]

Your first one resembles a modern Sphinx moth; where is it from?

I bought them many many years ago and have lost the bits of paper that came with them... all from Ebay... I think one was from Liaoning the other may be from BC Canada.... not really sure.

PL

[pleecan]

@pleecan: Your specimens are actually ephemeroptera, mayflies, with the first couple being of one from the cretaceous Crato of brazil and the last one being from early cretaceous of liaoning, china. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayfly

Lepidoptera emerged in the Jurassic but only 2 sets of wings have been found, and only 13 sets from the Cretaceous. These early ones are only identified based on the scaled wings and look nothing like moths or butterflies. They didn't really expand until the Eocene.

-YvW

PS: Just being accurate with ID, I hope I don't come off as rude!

Thank you for the ID... insects fossils are not my strong point... wow mayflies... I am always grateful for the correct ID... thank you thank you! I am still a newbie.. still learning stuff.

Peter

[HeritageFossils]

@pleecan: When I first got some mayflies in my collection, I thought they were butterflies too Its a very common misidentification, you'll be able to ID them as your collections expand! But ya, the tan matrix with orange-colored preservation is indicative of the Crato foramtion of Brazil.

[oilshale]

Just two fore wings from the Upper Pliocene of Willershausen am Harz / Germany:

Aporia crataegi cf, a Black-veined Whites

and Idaea nitidata cf, (not sure with Idaea, but at least a geometridae)

Thomas

Edited June 21, 2012 by oilshale

[piranha]

The fossil butterfly Prodryas persephone from the Florissant Fossil Beds of Colorado is easily among the top specimens ever collected. It's in the permanent collection of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Of MCZ's collection of thousands of fossil insects it has the distinction of catalog number MCZ-1. I attempted to locate the specimen here but it does not appear regardless of the search parameter. If anyone can discover how to access MCZ-1 from the database it would great to view the actual record.

View the image of Prodryas persephone at The Florissant Fossil Beds website here.

Prodryas persephone Scudder 1878

Family Nymphalidae (brush footed butterflies)

MCZ-1 (holotype) wingspan = 52mm

RE: The Fossils of Florissant / Herbert W. Meyer Washington [D.C.] : Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003

[Auspex]

It is apparently known from only a single specimen!

Here's a link to an engraving of it: My link

Another link: My other link

And a photo! My last link

[collector]

I saw this old "member collection' line of posts on butterflies and couldn't resist adding this just because I had recently found this interesting "fossil". It is an early elf foot, Elfinus minutes. It appears that he stepped on a perhaps poisonous butterfly and died.

sorry,

Patti