Selenops
Selenops is a spider genus that is found in many arid regions of the world, but some species may also be found in some cooler and even mountainous regions. Most of the 132 species are hard to visually distinguish, and requires study of their finer anatomy.

Marshal Hedin · 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
- SelenopidaePBDB
- Life habit
- solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida
Time the record covers
At least 48 million years on record.
The record covers at least 48.07 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 56 Mya to 0 Mya.
9 occurrences of Selenops on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
9 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Selenops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Selenops and its relatives
MioceneWhere Selenops and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
937 taxa- Cephalotes caribicus2 sites
- Cephalotes serratus2 sites
- Cephalotes squamosus2 sites
- Chimarra (Chimarrita) palaenova2 sites
- Chrosiothes curvispinosus2 sites
- Chrosiothes tumulus2 sites
- Cryptorhynchini2 sites
- Enacrosoma verrucosa2 sites
- Faiditus crassipatellaris2 sites
- Harpactosphecion sucinum2 sites
- Ischnothele2 sites
- Lasaeola2 sites
- Lyssomanes2 sites
- Masteria sexoculata2 sites
- Meioneta fastigata2 sites
- Meioneta separata2 sites
- Miagrammopes2 sites
- Miagrammopes dominicanus2 sites
- Micromalthus debilis2 sites
- Neomachilellus (Praeneomachilellus) dominicanus2 sites
- Nops lobatus2 sites
- Orchestina dominicana2 sites
- Oxyopes2 sites
- Philodromidae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Selenops, 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
7 references- Die fossilen Spinnen im dominikanischen Bernstein3
- The oldest fossil pholcid and selenopid spiders (Araneae) in lowermost Eocene amber from the Paris basin, France1
- Selenopidae y Thomisidae (Arachnida: Araneae) en ámbar de Chiapas, México1
- Fossil spiders of the family Selenopidae in Dominican amber1
- Subrecent spiders (Araneae) in copal from Madagascar, with description of new species1
- Advances in the taxonomy of spiders in Miocene amber from the Dominican Republic (Arthropoda: Araneae)1
- Die Familie Selenopidae in Dominikanischem Bernstein (Arachnida, Araneae)1
Each of the 9 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 Selenops
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Marshal Hedin
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Selenops 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, “Selenops”
- 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 itSelenopidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1819