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Spider crabs (Majoidea) are well-known from modern oceans and are also common in the western part of the Atlantic Ocean. When spider crabs appeared in the Western Atlantic in deep time, and when they became diverse, hinges on their fossil record. By reviewing their fossil record, we show that (1) spider crabs first appeared in the Western Atlantic in the Late Cretaceous, (2) they became common since the Miocene, and (3) most species and genera are found in the Caribbean region from the Miocene onwards. Furthermore, taxonomic work on some modern and fossil Mithracidae, a family that might have originated in the Western Atlantic, was conducted. Specifically,  Maguimithrax  gen. nov. is erected to accommodate the extant species  Damithrax spinosissimus , while  Damithrax  cf.  pleuracanthus  is recognized for the first time from the fossil record (late Pliocene–early Pleistocene, Florida, USA). Furthermore, two new species are described from the lower Miocene coral-associated limestones of Jamaica ( Mithrax arawakum  sp. nov. and  Nemausa windsorae  sp. nov.). Spurred by a recent revision of the subfamily, two known species from the same deposits are refigured and transferred to new genera:  Mithrax donovani  to  Nemausa , and  Mithrax unguis  to  Damithrax . The diverse assemblage of decapods from these coral-associated limestones underlines the importance of reefs for the abundance and diversity of decapods in deep time. Finally, we quantitatively show that these crabs possess allometric growth in that length/width ratios drop as specimens grow, a factor that is not always taken into account while describing and comparing among taxa.

Spider crabs of the Western Atlantic with special reference to fossil and some modern Mithracidae