Nephrops

Nephrops is a genus of lobsters comprising a three extant species and several fossil species. The best known is Nephrops norvegicus, the Norway lobster or Dublin Bay prawn. It was erected by William Elford Leach in 1814, to accommodate N. norvegicus alone, which had previously been placed in genera such as Cancer, Astacus or Homarus. The genus name Nephrops comes from Ancient Greek νεφρός (nephrós) 'kidney', and ὄψ (óps) 'eye', and refers to the shape of the animal's compound eye.

Nephrops

Hans Hillewaert · CC BY-SA 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
NephropidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
Life habit
infaunalPBDB, for Nephropoidea
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca

Time the record covers

At least 113 million years on record.

The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 8 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 8 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesEocene — about 1 of 8 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesMiocene — about 4 of 8 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 8 occurrencesPleistocene — about 2 of 8 occurrences122–118 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences118–114 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences114–110 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences57–53 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences53–49 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences49–45 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences12–8.1 Mya — about 2 occurrences8.1–4.1 Mya — about 2 occurrences4.1–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences113.2 Mya129 ka122 Mya0 Mya

8 occurrences of Nephrops 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

8 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.

Found in

4 formations

Gram — 55.28°N, 9.00°EGram — 55.31°N, 9.06°ECercado — 19.46°N, 71.10°WLondon Clay — 51.51°N, 0.24°EPawpaw — 32.67°N, 97.35°W

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The named rock units Nephrops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Nephrops and its relatives

Miocene

Where Nephrops and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

113 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Nephrops, 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

6 references

Each of the 8 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 Nephrops

Credit
Hans Hillewaert
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
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 itNephropidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Leach 1814