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Xiphosura
Sign in to saveAlso known as horseshoe crabs
Xiphosura (; , in reference to its sword-like telson) is an order of arthropods related to arachnids. They are more commonly known as horseshoe crabs (a name applied more specifically to the only extant family, Limulidae). They first appear in the fossil record in the Early Ordovician, around 480 million years ago. Currently, there are only four living species. Xiphosura contains one suborder, Xiphosurida, and several stem-genera.
OverviewAI-generated
Xiphosura is a taxon within the animal kingdom, classified under the phylum Arthropoda, class Merostomata, and order Xiphosurida. It belongs to the family Limulidae according to GBIF records, while WoRMS lists it under the family Xiphosuridae. The genus was described by Gronovius in 1764 and is commonly referred to as horseshoe crabs. Its habitat is marine.
The taxon has a start time of about 445 million years ago. According to WoRMS, its current status is unaccepted. In the United States, one record is held by the institution NMMNHS. There are two occurrence records listed in GBIF data.
Synthesized by Vinony from 33 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, GBIF, iNaturalist, PubMed, Gbif Occ, WoRMS, iDigBio, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Species
horseshoe crabs
Xiphosura
GENUS
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumArthropoda
- ClassMerostomata
- OrderXiphosurida
- FamilyLimulidae
via GBIF
Research
1,837 papers- The ontogeny of Limulus polyphemus (Xiphosura s. str., Euchelicerata) revised: looking "under the skin".Development genes and evolution · 2018
- An "ancient" complexity? Evolutionary morphology of the circulatory system in Xiphosura.Zoology (Jena, Germany) · 2015
- Diversity and evolutionary history of RNA viruses among different horseshoe crab species.Journal of virology · 2025
- Complete mitochondrial genomes of Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda and Tachypleus tridentatus (Xiphosura, Arthropoda) and implications for chelicerate phylogenetic studies.International journal of biological sciences · 2014
- Molecular phylogeny of extant horseshoe crabs (Xiphosura, Limulidae) indicates Paleogene diversification of Asian species.Molecular phylogenetics and evolution · 2012
via PubMed
~11 min read
Encyclopedic overview
11 sectionsContents
- Description
- Internal anatomy
- Reproduction
- Evolutionary history
- Classification
- Taxa removed from Xiphosura
- Cladogram
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
Xiphosura (; , in reference to its sword-like telson) is an order of arthropods related to arachnids. They are more commonly known as horseshoe crabs (a name applied more specifically to the only extant family, Limulidae). They first appear in the fossil record in the Early Ordovician, around 480 million years ago. Currently, there are only four living species. Xiphosura contains one suborder, Xiphosurida, and several stem-genera.
The group has hardly changed in appearance in hundreds of millions of years; the modern horseshoe crabs look almost identical to prehistoric genera and are considered to be living fossils. The most notable difference between ancient and modern forms is that the abdominal segments in present species are fused into a single unit in adults.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Xiphosura” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.