Phrynidae

Phrynidae is a family of amblypygid arachnida arthropods also known as whip spiders and tailless whip scorpions. Phrynidae species are found in tropical and subtropical regions in North and South America. Some species are subterranean; all are nocturnal. At least some species of Phrynidae hold territories that they defend from other individuals.

Phrynidae

Thomas Shahan · 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
PhrynoideaPBDB
Life habit
solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida

Time the record covers

At least 92 million years on record.

The record covers at least 113.2 Mya to 20.45 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 13.82 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 5 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 5 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesMiocene — about 4 of 5 occurrencesMiocene122–118 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences118–114 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences114–111 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences26–23 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences23–19 Mya — about 1 occurrence19–15 Mya — about 2 occurrences15–12 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences113.2 Mya20.45 Mya122 Mya12 Mya

5 occurrences of Phrynidae 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

5 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

1 formation

Crato — 7.13°S, 39.70°W

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The named rock units Phrynidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Phrynidae and its relatives

Miocene

Where Phrynidae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

306 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Phrynidae, 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

5 references

Each 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. 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 Phrynidae

Credit
Thomas Shahan
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Phrynidae was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.

MorphoSource was 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 itPhrynoidea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Blanchard 1852