Schizomida

Schizomida, also known as sprickets or short-tailed whip-scorpions, is an order of arachnids, generally less than 5 millimetres (0.20 in) in length. Native to subtropical and tropical regions globally, they generally live in leaf litter and caves, where they are active predators of other arthropods.

Schizomida

Evrytte Carlson · CC BY 4.0 · 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
short-tailed whip-scorpionPBDB
Sits inside
ThelyphonidaPBDB
Life habit
solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida

Time the record covers

At least 88 million years on record.

The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 2.58 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 0 of 16 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 9 of 16 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 16 occurrencesEocene — about 1 of 16 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 16 occurrencesMiocene — about 2 of 16 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 4 of 16 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 16 occurrences102–99 Mya — about 2 occurrences99–96 Mya — about 5 occurrences96–92 Mya — about 2 occurrences38–35 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences35–31 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21–18 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences18–14 Mya — about 1 occurrence14–11 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences7.4–4.0 Mya — about 2 occurrences4.0–622 ka Mya — about 2 occurrences93.9 Mya5.333 Mya102 Mya622 ka

16 occurrences of Schizomida on record, most of them in the Late 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

16 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

2 formations

Onyx Marble — 35.10°N, 112.59°WShahejie — 37.87°N, 118.79°E

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The named rock units Schizomida has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 11 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Schizomida and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Schizomida and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

822 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Schizomida, 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

8 references

Each of the 16 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 Schizomida

Credit
Evrytte Carlson
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

CT scan

Licence
In Copyright
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Schizomida indet. · lmu

Smithsonian Open Access 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 itThelyphonida through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Petrunkevitch 1945