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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2025
The knowledge on decapod crustaceans considerably increased in recent years, including that of the glypheid lobsters, known from the Early Jurassic to the present. On the basis of known occurrences worldwide, we analyze the spatial and temporal distribution of 86 species of the family Glypheidae and provide a general description of their history since the Early Jurassic. The first records are from low- to mid-paleolatitude localities of central Europe, around the margins of northern Tethys. During the Early Jurassic they diversified fast, and by Pliensbachian/Toarcian times they already had a wide paleolatitudinal range in both hemispheres. After a short decline in late Toarcian–Aalenian, they reached the highest diversity of their history during Oxfordian times and can be regarded as Jurassic cosmopolitans. After a diversity decline and occurrence gap during the earliest Cretaceous, they recovered again in the Barremian, but they were clearly beginning to be less diverse than before in the Tethys, to the point that by the Campanian their known occurrences were confined to high paleolatitudes. They survived the Cretaceous/Paleogene crisis but in Paleocene and Eocene times remained restricted to cold waters, being seemingly absent from low paleolatitudes. For a long time, the group was thought to be extinct about 50 million years ago, until two extant species were discovered in the deep Pacific. We also add to the knowledge of the only South American Jurassic Glypheidae known so far, the Toarcian Paraglyphea eureka (Damborenea and Manceñido, 1987) on the basis of newly collected material, discussing its significance and taphonomy.
Guest Editor: Ovidiu Frantescu