Laniatores
Laniatores is the largest suborder of the arachnid order Opiliones with over 4,200 described species worldwide. The majority of the species are highly dependent on humid environments and usually correlated with tropical and temperate forest habitats.

Marshal Hedin from San Diego · CC BY 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- Sits inside
- OpilionesPBDB
- Life habit
- solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida
Time the record covers
At least 73 million years on record.
The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 20.45 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 13.82 Mya.
22 occurrences of Laniatores 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
22 occurrences- Late Cretaceous55%
- Eocene27%
- Miocene18%
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.
Laniatores and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Laniatores and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1,927 taxa- Ablator triguttatus2 sites
- Adorator hispidus2 sites
- Apostenus spinimanus2 sites
- Araneae2 sites
- Archaea paradoxa2 sites
- Archipseudophasma2 sites
- Archipseudophasmatidae2 sites
- Baltarchaea conica2 sites
- Balticophasma2 sites
- Balticophasmatini2 sites
- Balticoroma ernstorum2 sites
- Caulophilus ashei2 sites
- Caulophilus falini2 sites
- Caulophilus swensoni2 sites
- Clya granulata2 sites
- Clya lugubris2 sites
- Clya obscura2 sites
- Cossonus hinojosai2 sites
- Cryptoplanus sericatus2 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti2 sites
- Custodela oblonga2 sites
- Dasyhelea2 sites
- Diphleps yenli2 sites
- Drosophilinae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Laniatores, 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
10 references- Laniatorean harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber7
- Four new laniatorean harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber4
- A new species of Laniatores (Arachnida: Opiliones) from Eocene Baltic amber with notes on the evolution of Insidiatores2
- Two laniatorid harvestmen (Opiliones: Cladonychiidae) from Eocene Baltic amber2
- Tertiary harvestmen from Dominican Republic amber2
- The oldest armoured harvestman (Arachnida: Opiliones: Laniatores), from Upper Cretaceous Myanmar amber1
- On the placement of the Baltic amber harvestman Gonyleptes nemastomoides Koch & Berendt, 1854, with notes on the phylogeny of Cladonychiidae (Opiliones, Laniatores, Travunioidea)1
- A new fossil harvestman from Dominican Republic amber (Opiliones, Samoidae, Hummelinckiolus)1
- A new species of fossil Pellobunus from Dominican Republic amber (Arachnida: Opiliones: Phalangodidae)1
- Die im Bernstein befindlichen Crustaceen, Myriapoden, Arachniden und Apteren der Vorwelt1
Each of the 22 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 Laniatores
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Marshal Hedin from San Diego
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Laniatores 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Laniatores”
- 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 itOpiliones through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Thorell 1876