Astacoidea

Astacoidea is superfamily of freshwater crayfish that live in the Northern Hemisphere. The other superfamily of crayfish, Parastacoidea, lives in the Southern Hemisphere. Astacoidea consists of three families: Astacidae, Cambaridae, and Cambaroididae. Crayfish are closely related to lobsters, as shown in the simplified cladogram below.

Astacoidea

David Gerke · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
AstacidaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB, for Decapoda
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca

Time the record covers

At least 205 million years on record.

The record covers at least 205.7 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 237 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Middle Triassic — about 0 of 19 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 1 of 19 occurrencesLate TriassicEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 19 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 19 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 2 of 19 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 5 of 19 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 4 of 19 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 19 occurrencesEocene — about 1 of 19 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 19 occurrencesMiocene — about 3 of 19 occurrencesPliocene — about 1 of 19 occurrencesPleistocene — about 2 of 19 occurrences242–234 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences234–226 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences226–218 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences218–210 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences210–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences153–145 Mya — about 1 occurrence145–137 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences129–121 Mya — about 5 occurrences105–97 Mya — about 1 occurrence97–89 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences89–81 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences81–73 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences73–64 Mya — about 1 occurrence56–48 Mya — about 1 occurrence24–16 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences16–8.1 Mya — about 1 occurrence8.1–0 Mya — about 4 occurrences205.7 Mya129 ka242 Mya0 Mya

19 occurrences of Astacoidea on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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

19 occurrences

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

10 formations

Payette — 43.87°N, 117.44°WPayette — 44.00°N, 117.24°WLa Huérguina — 40.06°N, 1.88°WLa Huérguina — 40.13°N, 2.01°WMorrison — 39.15°N, 108.77°WMorrison — 39.15°N, 108.77°WYixian — 41.19°N, 119.21°ELithofacies Association II — 35.87°N, 78.90°WKaiparowits — 37.42°N, 111.77°WSaldeño — 34.30°S, 69.72°WDölzschen Formation — 50.50°N, 12.13°EPeruc-Koryčany — 49.11°N, 17.16°EGreen River — 41.78°N, 110.73°W

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The named rock units Astacoidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Astacoidea and its relatives

Early Cretaceous

Where Astacoidea and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

450 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Astacoidea, 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

12 references

Each of the 19 occurrences 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. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Astacoidea

Credit
David Gerke
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

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 itAstacida through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802