Dictynidae

Dictynidae is a family of cribellate, hackled band-producing spiders first described by Octavius Pickard-Cambridge in 1871. Most build irregular webs on or near the ground, creating a tangle of silken fibers among several branches or stems of one plant.

Dictynidae

Akio Tanikawa · 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
Sits inside
EntelegynaePBDB
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 74 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 6 of 74 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 74 occurrencesEocene — about 42 of 74 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 74 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 21 of 74 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 74 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 74 occurrences103–99 Mya — about 1 occurrence99–96 Mya — about 3 occurrences96–92 Mya — about 2 occurrences92–89 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences41–38 Mya — about 1 occurrence38–34 Mya — about 38 occurrences34–31 Mya — about 3 occurrences27–24 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences24–21 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21–17 Mya — about 11 occurrences17–14 Mya — about 9 occurrences14–10 Mya — about 1 occurrence3.4–0 Mya — about 4 occurrences93.9 Mya11.7 ka103 Mya0 Mya

74 occurrences of Dictynidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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

74 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

5 formations

Barstow — 34.95°N, 116.83°WBarstow — 34.94°N, 116.83°WBembridge Marls — 50.74°N, 1.36°WBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WRaritan — 40.47°N, 74.32°WUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°E

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The named rock units Dictynidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 65 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Dictynidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Dictynidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

3,796 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Dictynidae, and this reads all of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. 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

17 references

Each of the 74 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. 5 further references are not listed. 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 Dictynidae

Credit
Akio Tanikawa
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Dictynidae 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 itEntelegynae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Pickard-Cambridge 1871