Metacarcinus novaezelandiae
The pie crust crab, is a species of crab found around New Zealand and south-eastern Australia.

Auckland Museum Collections from Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand · 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
- MetacarcinusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
- Life habit
- semi-infaunalPBDB, for Cancridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At least 8.4 million years on record.
The record covers at least 11.04 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 13.05 Mya to 1.8 Mya.
5 occurrences of Metacarcinus novaezelandiae on record. 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
5 occurrences- Miocene40%
- Pleistocene60%
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
2 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Metacarcinus novaezelandiae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
3 taxaThe Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Metacarcinus novaezelandiae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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 5 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 Metacarcinus novaezelandiae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Auckland Museum Collections from Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Metacarcinus novaezelandiae 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 itMetacarcinus through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Jacquinot 1853)