Ligiidae
Ligiidae is a family of woodlice, the only family in the infraorder Diplocheta. The members of this family are common on rocky shores, in similar habitats to those inhabited by species of the bristletail Petrobius and the crab Cyclograpsus.

me'nthedogs · 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
- OniscideaPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Malacostraca
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At most 5.8 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 106.3 Mya and 100.5 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Ligiidae on record, most of them in the Early 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
3 occurrences- Early Cretaceous100%
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
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The named rock units Ligiidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ligiidae and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Ligiidae and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
126 taxa- Afrapia nihtmara1 site
- Alavamanota hispanica1 site
- Alavametra popovi1 site
- Alavaraphidia imperterrita1 site
- Alavaromma orchamum1 site
- Alavascelio delvallei1 site
- Alavatanais carabe1 site
- Alavatanais margulisae1 site
- Alavesia subiasi1 site
- Alavesiaphis margaritae1 site
- Allocotocera xavieri1 site
- Amissascelio temporarius1 site
- Ampulicomorpha perialla1 site
- Aposerphites angustus1 site
- Archaeatropos alavensis1 site
- Archaeromma hispanicum1 site
- Archeallacma dolichopoda1 site
- Archephedrus stolamissus1 site
- Archiaustroconops alavensis1 site
- Autrigoniscus resinicola1 site
- Autrigonoforceps iberica1 site
- Baissoptera cretaceoelectra1 site
- Berothidae1 site
- Bruescelio platycephalus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ligiidae, 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
1 referenceEach of the 3 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Ligiidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- me'nthedogs
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ligiidae 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, “Ligiidae”
- 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 itOniscidea through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brandt 1833