Axius
Axius is a genus of mud lobster containing the following species:Axius armatus S. I. Smith, 1881 †Axius hofstedtae Hyžný, Jakobsen & Fraaije, 2017 †Axius lineadactylus †Axius reticulatus Rathbun, 1918 Axius serratus Stimpson, 1852 Axius stirynchus Leach, 1815 †Axius texensis

Uncredited · Public Domain · 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
- AxiidaePBDB
- Diet
- detritivorePBDB, for Axiidea
- Life habit
- infaunalPBDB, for Axiidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At least 100 million years on record.
The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 106.3 Mya to 11.7 ka.
8 occurrences of Axius on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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
8 occurrences- Early Cretaceous13%
- Oligocene38%
- Miocene13%
- Pliocene25%
- Pleistocene13%
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
5 formations
- Vejlefjord Formation2
- Kishima Formation1
- Oosterhout Formation1
- Pawpaw Formation · Washita Group1
- Culebra Formation1
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The named rock units Axius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Axius and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Axius and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
134 taxa- Ensis2 sites
- Galeodea bicatenata2 sites
- Glossus2 sites
- Abra (Abra) prismatica1 site
- Abra alba1 site
- Acanthaxius carinatus1 site
- Acanthocardia (Acanthocardia) echinata1 site
- Achomosphaera andalousiensis suttonensis1 site
- Amiculosphaera1 site
- Amyclina labiosa1 site
- Angulus (Peronaea) benedeni1 site
- Aporrhais1 site
- Aquipecten cf. opercularis1 site
- Arctica islandica1 site
- Arenaeus1 site
- Arnoglossus laterna1 site
- Astarte1 site
- Astarte (Astarte) galeotti1 site
- Astarte (Digitariopsis) obliquata1 site
- Astarte incerta1 site
- Ataxiodinium1 site
- Balaenopteridae1 site
- Barssidinium1 site
- Bitectatodinum tepikiense1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Axius, 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
5 references- Reappraisal of the burrowing lobster Axius (Malacostraca: Decapoda: Axiidea) in the fossil record with notes on palaeobiogeography and description of a new species2
- A new axiid (Crustacea: Decapoda: Axiidea) from the Neogene of Belgium and the Netherlands2
- Decapod crustaceans from the Panama region2
- Fossil mudshrimps (Decapoda: Axiidea) from the Pawpaw Formation (Cretaceous: Albian), northeast Texas, USA1
- Palaeogene decapod Crustacea from the Kishima and Okinoshima Groups, Jyushu, Japan1
Each of the 8 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 Axius
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- 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 itAxiidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leach 1816