Palaemonidae
Palaemonidae is a family of shrimp in the order Decapoda. Many species are carnivores that eat small invertebrates, and can be found in any aquatic habitat except the deep sea. One significant genus is Macrobrachium, which contains commercially fished species. Others inhabit coral reefs, where they associate with certain invertebrates, such as sponges, cnidarians, mollusks, and echinoderms, as cleaner shrimps, parasites, or commensals. They generally feed on detritus, though some are carnivores and hunt tiny animals.

The original uploader was Aquaimages at English Wikipedia . · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- PalaemonoideaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Decapoda
- Life habit
- epifaunalPBDB, for Decapoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Malacostraca
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Malacostraca
Time the record covers
At least 201 million years on record.
The record covers at least 239.48 Mya to 37.71 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 241.464 Mya to 33.9 Mya.
23 occurrences of Palaemonidae 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
23 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
6 formations
- Headon Hill Formation9
- Crato Formation · Santana Group4
- Meissner Formation1
- Aurisina Formation1
- Romualdo Formation · Santana Group1
- Green River Formation1
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The named rock units Palaemonidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 6 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Palaemonidae and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Palaemonidae and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
230 taxa- Propalaemon osborniensis5 sites
- Beurlenia araripensis4 sites
- Cratoelcana zessini3 sites
- Protoischnurus axelrodorum3 sites
- Blittersdorffia pleoneura2 sites
- Cearagrylloides perforatorius2 sites
- Gondwanelcana brasiliensis2 sites
- Osteichthyes2 sites
- Panorpidium damianii2 sites
- Accordiella1 site
- Acixiites costalis1 site
- Acixiites immodesta1 site
- Aculeata1 site
- Acynodon adriaticus1 site
- Aestuacrida mikronaulion1 site
- Aestuacrida stereofemoris1 site
- Amia fragosa1 site
- Amia uintaensis1 site
- Ampulicidae1 site
- Ancorale1 site
- Ancorale aschemon1 site
- Ancorale flaccidum1 site
- Angarosphex magnus1 site
- Angarosphex parvus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Palaemonidae, 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- On some fossil prawns from the Osborne Beds of the Isle of Wight9
- Reborn from the ashes: revision of Beurlenia araripensis Martins-Neto and Mezzalira, 1991 (Crustacea: Decapoda)3
- Redescription and illustration of caridean shrimp from the Cretaceous (Aptian) of Brazil2
- An Upper Cretaceous arthropod assemblage from Villaggio del Pescatore (Campanian, Italy) and its implications for peri‐Tethyan palaeobiogeography and palaeoecology1
- Zwei neue natante Dekapoden aus dem Oberen Muschelkalk (Mittel-Trias, Ladin) des Germanischen Beckens - Antrimpos germanicus n. sp. und Parapalaemonetes thuringiacus n. gen. n. sp.1
- A new fossil caridean shrimp (Crustacea: Decapoda) from the Cretaceous (Albian) of the Romualdo Formation, Araripe Basin, northeastern Brazil1
- Palaemon antonellae new species (Crustacea, Decapoda, Caridea) from the lower Cretaceous "Platydolomite" of Profeti (Caserta, Italy)1
- Yongjicaris zhejiangensis n. gen. n. sp. (Crustacea, Decapoda, Caridea) from the Lower Cretaceous of Zhejiang Province, China1
- Palaemon vesolensis n. sp. (Crustacea, Decapoda) from the Platten kalk of Vesole Mount (Salerno, Southern Italy)1
- Plattenkalk of the Lower Cretaceous (Albian) of Petina, in the Alburni Mounts (Campania, S Italy), and its decapod crustacean assemblage1
- First records of fossil sergestid decapods and fossil brachyuran crab larvae (Arthropoda, Crustacea) : with remarks on some supposed palaemonid fossils, from the Santana Formation (Aptian-Albian, NE Brazil)1
- Paleontology of the Green River Formation, with a review of the fish fauna1
Each of the 23 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 Palaemonidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- The original uploader was Aquaimages at English Wikipedia .
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Palaemonidae 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 itPalaemonoidea through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Rafinesque 1815