Cryptosoma bairdii

Noémy Mollaret · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
- CryptosomaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB, for Calappidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At least 4.6 million years on record.
The record covers at least 7.246 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 774 ka.
6 occurrences of Cryptosoma bairdii on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
6 occurrences- Miocene67%
- Pliocene17%
- Pleistocene17%
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
3 formations
- Cercado Formation · Yaque Group4
- Montezuma Formation1
- Cayo Agua Formation1
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The named rock units Cryptosoma bairdii has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Cryptosoma bairdii and its relatives
MioceneWhere Cryptosoma bairdii and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
158 taxa- Persephona prepunctata4 sites
- Calappa flammea3 sites
- Hepatus guraboensis3 sites
- Petrochirus inequalis3 sites
- Callinectes declivis2 sites
- Mesorhoea mauryae2 sites
- Panopeus2 sites
- Portunus tenuis2 sites
- Acar domingensis1 site
- Aclis1 site
- Acteocina canaliculata1 site
- Acteocina recta1 site
- Anadara (Cunearca) corcupidonis1 site
- Anadara (Hawaiarca) cibaoica1 site
- Anadara (Sectiarca) henekeni1 site
- Anodontia alba1 site
- Aphera islacolonis1 site
- Arca (Arca) yaquensis1 site
- Architectonica nobilis1 site
- Argopecten eccentricus1 site
- Astralium1 site
- Atys doliolum1 site
- Balcis (Balcis) jacululum1 site
- Bittium1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Cryptosoma bairdii, 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
3 references- Decapod crustaceans from the Neogene of the Caribbean: diversity, distribution and prospectus3
- Neogene and Quaternary crabs (Crustacea, Decapoda) collected from Costa Rica and Panama by members of the Panama Paleontology Project2
- West Indian Tertiary decapod crustaceans1
Each of the 6 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 Cryptosoma bairdii
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Noémy Mollaret
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cryptosoma bairdii 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCryptosoma through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Stimpson 1860)