Mesozoic-diversity
Guides
Anaxyelidae
incense cedar wood wasps
Anaxyelidae is a relict family of siricoid wood wasps (Hymenoptera: Symphyta) represented today by a single extant species, Syntexis libocedrii, in western North America. The family was highly diverse during the Mesozoic, with over two dozen extinct genera and more than 50 fossil species documented from Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits across Asia, Europe, and North America. The family comprises two subfamilies: Anaxyelinae, which dominated the Jurassic, and Syntexinae, which prevailed in the Cretaceous and survives today.