Mimetidae

Pirate spiders, members of the family Mimetidae, are araneomorph spiders which typically feed on other spiders.

Mimetidae

Michael Hohner ( Mhohner ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
Also called
pirate spiderPBDB
Sits inside
AraneoideaPBDB
Life habit
solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida

Time the record covers

At least 13 million years on record.

The record covers at least 33.9 Mya to 20.45 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 37.71 Mya to 13.82 Mya.

Eocene — about 29 of 32 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesMiocene — about 3 of 32 occurrencesMiocene38–37 Mya — about 3 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 6 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 6 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 6 occurrences35–34 Mya — about 6 occurrences34–33 Mya — about 1 occurrence23–22 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences22–22 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences17–16 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences14–13 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences33.9 Mya20.45 Mya38.2 Mya13.3 Mya

32 occurrences of Mimetidae 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

32 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 the same rock

3,005 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 13 sites for Mimetidae, 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

12 references

Each of the 32 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 content2

Picture of Mimetidae

Credit
Michael Hohner ( Mhohner )
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Credit
Spider
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

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 itAraneoidea through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Simon 1881