Siphonophoridae
Siphonophoridae is a family of millipedes in the order Siphonophorida. There are about 12 genera and more than 110 described species in Siphonophoridae.

Helen J. Read & Henrik Enghoff · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikidata/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
- SiphonophoridaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Time the record covers
At least 73 million years on record.
The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 20.45 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 13.82 Mya.
13 occurrences of Siphonophoridae 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
13 occurrences- Late Cretaceous38%
- Miocene62%
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.
Siphonophoridae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Siphonophoridae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,741 taxa- Polydesmida4 sites
- Siphonophora4 sites
- Geophilomorpha3 sites
- Phryssonotus burmiticus3 sites
- Polyzoniida3 sites
- Scolopendromorpha3 sites
- Andrognathus burmiticus2 sites
- Apocephalus succineus2 sites
- Araneae2 sites
- Burmadictyna excavata2 sites
- Burmathele2 sites
- Burmesarchaea bilongapophyses2 sites
- Burmesarchaea pseudogibber2 sites
- Burmorsolus2 sites
- Caulophilus ashei2 sites
- Caulophilus falini2 sites
- Caulophilus swensoni2 sites
- Chalcosicya2 sites
- Cossonus hinojosai2 sites
- Diphleps yenli2 sites
- Docodesmus2 sites
- Drosophilinae2 sites
- Dryinus katyae2 sites
- Elephantomyia (Elephantomyia) grata2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Siphonophoridae, 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
6 references- Millipeds from Dominican amber, with the description of two new species (Diplopoda: Siphonophoridae) of Siphonophora5
- Checklist of the Myriapoda in Cretaceous Burmese amber and a correction of the Myriapoda identified by Zhang (2017)3
- The millipedes and centipedes of Chiapas amber2
- Morphological revision of Siphonophora hui (Myriapoda: Diplopoda: Siphonophoridae) from the mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber1
- One hundred million years of stasis: Siphonophora hui sp. nov., the first Mesozoic sucking millipede (Diplopoda: Siphonophorida) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber1
- Two fossil millipeds from the Dominican amber (Diplopoda: Chytodesmidae, Siphonophoridae)1
Each of the 13 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 Siphonophoridae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Helen J. Read & Henrik Enghoff
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Siphonophoridae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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 itSiphonophorida through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Newport 1844