Harpactea

Harpactea is a genus in the family Dysderidae. Harpactea is a replacement name published by W. S. Bristowe in 1939 for the unavailable name "Harpactes" published by R. Templeton in 1835, which had already been used for a genus of birds. They are non-web building predators that forage on the ground and on tree trunks at night, mainly in xerothermic forests. During the day, they hide in silk retreats they build under rocks or bark.

Harpactea

Alexis Lours · CC BY 4.0 · 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
HarpacteinaePBDB
Life habit
solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida

Time the record covers

At most 3.9 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 37.71 Mya and 33.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Eocene — about 11 of 11 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 11 occurrences38–38 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences38–37 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences35–34 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences38.21 Mya33.4 Mya

11 occurrences of Harpactea 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

11 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.

Harpactea and its relatives

Eocene

Where Harpactea and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

1,804 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Harpactea, 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

Each of the 11 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Harpactea

Credit
Alexis Lours
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Harpactea 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.

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 itHarpacteinae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bristowe 1939