Pycnogonida

Sea spiders are marine arthropods of the class Pycnogonida, hence they are also called pycnogonids. The class includes the only extant order Pantopoda, alongside a few fossil species which could trace back to the early or mid-Paleozoic.

Pycnogonida

Romain Sabroux, Russell J. Garwood, Davide Pisani, Philip C. J. Donoghue, Gregory D. Edgecombe D. Siveter, M. Sutton,… · 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
Also called
sea spiderPBDB
Sits inside
ArthropodaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
epifaunalPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB
Vision
limitedPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 277 million years on record.

The record covers at least 426.7 Mya to 149.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 432.9 Mya to 145.06 Mya.

Silurian — about 1 of 15 occurrencesDevonian — about 8 of 15 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 0 of 15 occurrencesPermian — about 0 of 15 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 15 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 15 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 15 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 15 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 4 of 15 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 2 of 15 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 15 occurrences439–429 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences429–419 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences419–409 Mya — about 1 occurrence409–399 Mya — about 7 occurrences169–159 Mya — about 4 occurrences149–139 Mya — about 2 occurrences426.7 Mya149.2 Mya439 Mya139 Mya

15 occurrences of Pycnogonida on record, most of them in the Devonian. 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

15 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

Hunsrück Slate — 49.89°N, 7.47°EHunsrück Slate — 49.83°N, 7.37°EKaub — 49.84°N, 7.37°EHunsruck Slate — 49.85°N, 7.39°ESolnhofen — 48.91°N, 11.14°E

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The named rock units Pycnogonida has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Pycnogonida and its relatives

Devonian

Where Pycnogonida and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

376 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Pycnogonida, 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

9 references

Each of the 15 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 Pycnogonida

Credit
Romain Sabroux, Russell J. Garwood, Davide Pisani, Philip C. J. Donoghue, Gregory D. Edgecombe D. Siveter, M. Sutton,…
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Pycnogonida 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 itArthropoda through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1810