Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
NarrativeWikipediaarticle
Occurrence & distributionGBIF · PBDB23 records
Deep timePBDB2 fossils
01Narrative
Mecochirus longimanatus is an extinct species of lobster-like decapod crustacean from the Jurassic of Europe. The Maxberg Specimen of Archaeopteryx was initially assigned to Mechocirus longimanatus before it was realised that it belonged to Archaeopteryx lithographica.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
Fossil range149–145 Ma Jurassic
Dated fossil finds2
StatusExtinct no longer alive anywhere
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard periods (Jurassic, Cretaceous…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. The dashed rules marked ✦ are the five great mass extinctions. The solid bar is the fossil range: the span between the oldest and the youngest fossil that palaeontologists have assigned to Mecochirus longimanatus. Above itBeside it, each dot is one dated fossil find — few enough to count, so they are drawn individually rather than as a graph.
fossil range (PBDB) †each dot = one dated findmass extinction
