Ctenizidae

Ctenizidae is a small family of mygalomorph spiders that construct burrows with a cork-like trapdoor made of soil, vegetation, and silk. They may be called trapdoor spiders, as are other, similar species, such as those of the families Liphistiidae, Barychelidae, and Cyrtaucheniidae, and some species in the Idiopidae and Nemesiidae. The name comes from the distinctive behavior of the spiders to construct trapdoors, and ambush prey from beneath them.

Ctenizidae

Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
cork-lid trapdoor spiderPBDB
Sits inside
AvicularioideaPBDB
Life habit
solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida

Time the record covers

At least 56 million years on record.

The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 37.71 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 33.9 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 4 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 2 of 4 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 4 occurrencesEocene — about 2 of 4 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 4 occurrences102–100 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences100–97 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences97–95 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences95–93 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences86–83 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences83–81 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences81–79 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences79–76 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences76–74 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences74–72 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences39–37 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences37–35 Mya — about 1 occurrence35–33 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences93.9 Mya37.71 Mya102 Mya33 Mya

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

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.

Found in

1 formation

Kabaw — 21.68°N, 94.08°E

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The named rock units Ctenizidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Ctenizidae and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

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

Found in the same rock

773 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Ctenizidae, 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

2 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Ctenizidae

Credit
Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ctenizidae 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 itAvicularioidea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Thorell 1887