Charybdis
Charybdis is a genus of swimming crabs in the family Portunidae. It is named after the monster Charybdis of Greek mythology.

self · 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
- ThalamitinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB, for Portunoidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At least 13 million years on record.
The record covers at least 13.82 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 15.98 Mya to 0 Mya.
18 occurrences of Charybdis on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
18 occurrences- Miocene33%
- Pliocene22%
- Pleistocene33%
- Holocene11%
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
- Ndalithoni Limestone Formation2
- Ndalithoni Formation2
- Shimosueyoshi Formation1
- Dainichi Formation · Kakegawa Group1
- Sekinobana Formation1
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The named rock units Charybdis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Charybdis and its relatives
MioceneWhere Charybdis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
195 taxa- Chlorodiella mediterranea5 sites
- Daira speciosa5 sites
- Xantho moldavicus5 sites
- Dromia neogenica3 sites
- Galathea weinfurteri3 sites
- Haydnella steiningeri3 sites
- Petrolisthes magnus3 sites
- Pilumnus mediterraneus3 sites
- Pisidia kokayi3 sites
- Porites3 sites
- Tarbellastraea3 sites
- Calappa heberti2 sites
- Calappa praelata2 sites
- Dynomene emiliae2 sites
- Galene bispinosa2 sites
- Glabropilumnus2 sites
- Macrophthalmus (Mareotis) wilfordi2 sites
- Necronectes schafferi2 sites
- Pachygrapsus hungaricus2 sites
- Panopeus wronai2 sites
- Pisa oroszyi2 sites
- Rakosia carupoides2 sites
- Schizophrys visegradensis2 sites
- Trapezia glaessneri2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Charybdis, 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
9 references- Decapod crustacea of the Badenian5
- Cenozoic Decapod Crustacea from Southwest Japan2
- Neogene crabs from Brunei, Sabah, and Sarawak2
- On the Early Holocene crab (Brachyura) fauna of Moyang Estuary, Guangdong Province. China2
- Geology of Lau, Fiji2
- Decapod Crustacea2
- Miocene and Pleistocene Crabs (Crustacea, Decapoda) from Sabah and Sarawak1
- Studies on Quaternary fossil crabs and associated faunas from Hainan Island, southern China1
- Fossil Crab, Charybdis cfr. japonica (A. M. Edwards) from Hodogaya Bluff, Yokohama, Japan1
Each of the 18 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 content2
Picture of Charybdis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- self
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- realistic green
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itThalamitinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (De Haan 1833)