Neptunus
Portunus is a genus of crabs which includes several important species for fisheries, such as the blue swimming crab and the Gazami crab. Other species, such as the three-spotted crab are caught as bycatch.

Philippe Guillaume · 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
- PortunidaePBDB
- 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 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
4 occurrences of Neptunus on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
4 occurrencesThese 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
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The named rock units Neptunus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Neptunus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Neptunus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
55 taxa- Clypeaster2 sites
- Acanthocarpus obscurus1 site
- Aequipecten1 site
- Ampullinopsis crassatina1 site
- Argopecten1 site
- Callinectes paraensis1 site
- Callinectes reticulatus1 site
- Carcharhinus ackermannii1 site
- Cassidulus1 site
- Cerithium bermotiense1 site
- Cerithium pseudoobeliscus1 site
- Chlamys (Chlamys)1 site
- Chlamys japericensis1 site
- Cubitostrea1 site
- Cyathula sp.1 site
- Dilatilabrum sublatissimum1 site
- Diodon1 site
- Eupatagus1 site
- Flabellum1 site
- Galeocerdo mayumbensis1 site
- Hemipristis serra1 site
- Leptopecten latiauratus1 site
- Lyria (Indolyria) maniyaraensis1 site
- Megabalanus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Neptunus, 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
3 references- Localidades fossiliferas da Formacao Pirabas (Mioceno Inferior)2
- Cyclone trends constrain monsoon variability during late Oligocene sea level highstands (Kachchh Basin, NW India)1
- Notes on North American Crustacea, in the Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. No. II1
Each of the 4 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 Neptunus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Philippe Guillaume
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Neptunus 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, “Portunus”
- 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 itPortunidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. de Haan 1839