Ixodidae

The Ixodidae are the family of hard ticks or scale ticks, one of the three families of ticks, consisting of 750 species, as of 2025. They are known as 'hard ticks' because they have a scutum or hard shield, which the other major family of ticks, the 'soft ticks' (Argasidae), lack. They are ectoparasites of a wide range of host species, and some are vectors of pathogens that can cause human disease.

Ixodidae

Richard Bartz · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
hard tickPBDB
Sits inside
IxodoideaPBDB
Life habit
solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida

Time the record covers

At least 93 million years on record.

The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 0 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 4 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 3 of 4 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 4 occurrences103–99 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences99–96 Mya — about 2 occurrences96–92 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences3.4–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence93.9 Mya11.7 ka103 Mya0 Mya

4 occurrences of Ixodidae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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

4 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.

Ixodidae and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Ixodidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

212 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Ixodidae, 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

4 references

Each of the 4 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Ixodidae

Credit
Richard Bartz
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ixodidae 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

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 itIxodoidea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Banks 1907