Most of the dominant families - such as the Carabidae (ground-beetles), Scarabaeidae (chafers), or Curculionidae (weevils) have a distribution as wide as the order.
And when we know that the Chrysomelidae and Buprestidae also lived in Triassic, and the Carabidae, Elateridae, Cerambycidae and Scarabaeidae, in Liassic times, we cannot doubt that the great majority of our existing families had already been differentiated at the beginning of the Mesozoic epoch.
The Carabidae, or ground-beetles, comprising 13,000 species, form FIG.
In many Carabidae the hind-wings are reduced or absent, and the elytra fused together along the suture.
Blind Carabidae form a large proportion of cave dwelling beetles, and several species of great interest live between tide-marks along the seashore.