Alpheus
Alpheus is a genus of snapping shrimp of the family Alpheidae. This genus contains in excess of 330 species, making this the most species-rich genus of shrimp, although the genus is unlikely to be a natural grouping (monophyletic) as phylogenetic analyses have recovered other alpheid genera within this genus.

OpenCage · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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- Sits inside
- AlpheidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Alpheidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At most 4.3 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 27.3 Mya and 23.04 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Alpheus on record, most of them in the Oligocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
1 occurrences- Oligocene100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Alpheus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Alpheus and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Alpheus and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
60 taxa- Acanthocybium1 site
- Aetomylaeus1 site
- Albulidae1 site
- Allomorone1 site
- Alopias1 site
- Anoxypristis1 site
- Aplodinotus distortus1 site
- Batomorphii1 site
- Brachaeluridae1 site
- Carcharhinus acuarius1 site
- Carcharhinus elongatus1 site
- Carcharias cuspidatus1 site
- Carnivora1 site
- Cetacea1 site
- Chiloscyllium1 site
- Congridae1 site
- Corvina gemma1 site
- Dasyatidae1 site
- Diplodus1 site
- Euselachii1 site
- Euungulata1 site
- Galeocerdo platycuspidatum1 site
- Galeorhinus1 site
- Hemipristis intermedia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Alpheus, and this reads all of them. 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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Alpheus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- OpenCage
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Alpheus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- 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 itAlpheidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fabricius 1798