Dipluridae
The family Dipluridae, known as curtain-web spiders are a group of spiders in the infraorder Mygalomorphae, that have two pairs of booklungs, and chelicerae (fangs) that move up and down in a stabbing motion. A number of genera, including that of the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax), used to be classified in this family but have now been moved to Atracidae.

Fritz Geller-Grimm · 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- Also called
- funnel-web tarantulaPBDB
- Sits inside
- AvicularioideaPBDB
- Life habit
- solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida
Time the record covers
At least 185 million years on record.
The record covers at least 205.7 Mya to 20.45 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 227.3 Mya to 13.82 Mya.
30 occurrences of Dipluridae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
30 occurrencesThese 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
- Crato Formation · Santana Group8
- Blackstone Formation1
- Duck Creek Formation · Washita Group1
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The named rock units Dipluridae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 20 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dipluridae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Dipluridae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
2,641 taxa- Clostes priscus8 sites
- Archaea paradoxa5 sites
- Balticoroma serafinorum5 sites
- Bradoponera meieri5 sites
- Cretadiplura ceara5 sites
- Prosphyracephala succini5 sites
- Tetraponera simplex5 sites
- Ablator triguttatus4 sites
- Adorator hispidus4 sites
- Balticoroma ernstorum4 sites
- Cratosolpuga wunderlichi4 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti4 sites
- Episinus longimanus4 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi4 sites
- Gnamptogenys europaea4 sites
- Lasaeola infulata4 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri4 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea4 sites
- Plagiolepis solitaria4 sites
- Prenolepis henschei4 sites
- Prodinapsis succinalis4 sites
- Succinilipus4 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi4 sites
- Araneae3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Dipluridae, 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
13 references- The fossil mygalomorph spiders (Araneae) in Baltic and Dominican amber and about extant members of the family Micromygalidae9
- Mygalomorph spiders (Araneae: Dipluridae) from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Lagerstätte, Araripe basin, north-east Brazil7
- Die fossilen Spinnen im dominikanischen Bernstein3
- Edwa maryae gen. et sp. nov. in the Norian Blackstone Formation of the Ipswich Basin—the first Triassic spider (Mygalomorphae) from Australia2
- Descriptions of new fossil spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) in Late (Mid) Cretaceous Burmese amber with focus on the superfamilies Palpimanoidea and Deinopoidea and members of the RTA-clade, as well as remarks on palaeobehaviour, palaeofauna, taxonomy and phylogenetics1
- New and rare fossil spiders (Araneae) in mid Cretaceous amber from Myanmar (Burma), including the description of new extinct families of the suborders Mesothelae and Opisthothelae, as well as notes on the taxonomy, the evolution and the biogeography of the Mesothelae1
- On the evolution and the classification of spiders, the Mesozoic spider faunas, and descriptions of new Cretaceous taxa mainly in amber from Myanmar (Burma) (Arachnida: Araneae)1
- A new Early Cretaceous coelacanth from Texas1
- On the fossil spider (Araneae) fauna in Cretaeous ambers, with descriptions of new taxa from Myanmar (Burma) and Jordan, and on the relationships of the superfamily Leptonetoidea1
- Some fossil spiders (Araneae) in Eocene European ambers1
- Spinnen der Familien Tetragnathidae, Uloboridae und Dipluridae in Dominikanischem Bernstein und allgemeine Gesichtspunkte (Arachnida, Araneae)1
- Fossil Spiders in the Collection of the American Museum of Natural History1
Each of the 30 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. 1 further reference is not listed. 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 Dipluridae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Fritz Geller-Grimm
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dipluridae was found in Sketchfab.
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Dipluridae”
- 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 itAvicularioidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Simon 1889