Liocarcinus
Liocarcinus is an extinct genus of crabs in the family Polybiidae.

Hans Hillewaert · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikidata/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
- PolybiinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB, for Portunoidea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At least 39 million years on record.
The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 1.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 774 ka.
17 occurrences of Liocarcinus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
17 occurrences- Eocene6%
- Oligocene6%
- Miocene69%
- Pliocene13%
- Pleistocene6%
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
- Maikop Formation2
- Pinczow Formation1
- Chiampo Marble Formation1
- Lillo Formation1
- Calcaire à Astéries Formation1
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The named rock units Liocarcinus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Liocarcinus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Liocarcinus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
99 taxa- Parthenope szaboi4 sites
- Pilumnus mediterraneus4 sites
- Actumnus telegdii3 sites
- Callianassa kerepesiensis3 sites
- Miopipus pygmeus3 sites
- Brachynotus februarius2 sites
- Calappa heberti2 sites
- Callianassa2 sites
- Callianassa munieri2 sites
- Cerithium2 sites
- Crangon miocenicus2 sites
- Dardanus hungaricus2 sites
- Dorippe margaretha2 sites
- Ebalia hungarica2 sites
- Galathea weinfurteri2 sites
- Glycymeris2 sites
- Inachus lethaeus2 sites
- Lissocarcinus szoeraenyiae2 sites
- Lucanthonisia eotvoesi2 sites
- Maja austriaca2 sites
- Maja biaensis2 sites
- Matuta brocchii2 sites
- Mursia lienharti2 sites
- Pachygrapsus hungaricus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Liocarcinus, 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
11 references- Decapod crustacea of the Badenian4
- Liocarcinus lancetidactylus (Smirnov, 1929) and Platymaia lethaeus (Smirnov, 1929) (Crustacea, Brachyura) from the Lower Miocene of N Caucasus (Russia)2
- Middle Miocene decapod Crustacea from southern Poland2
- Decapoda (Crustacea) fauna a budapesti miocénből (2)2
- New report of decapod and isopod crustaceans from the Lower-Middle Pleistocene of Montalbano Jonico, Matera (Basilicata, southern Italy)1
- Crostacei decapodi del "Tufo A Lophoranina" (Luteziano inferiore) dalla valle del Chiampo (Vincenza-Italia Nordorientale)1
- New fossil decapod crustaceans from the Remy Collection, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris1
- New reports of anomurans and brachyurans from the Cenozoic of Tuscany (Italy)1
- Brachyuran and anomuran fauna from the Cenozoic of Piedmont (NW Italy)1
- Piacenzian (Pliocene) decapod crustacean faunules from northwest Belgium1
- The Lower Badenian (Middle Miocene) coral patch reef at Grobie (southern slopes of the Holy Cross Mountains, Central Poland), its origin, development and demise1
Each of the 17 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 Liocarcinus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Hans Hillewaert
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Liocarcinus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Liocarcinus”
- 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 itPolybiinae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Stimpson 1871