ABSTRACT
The preserved record of the Cretaceous crabs of North America is affected by the preservation potentials of their habitats, their mode of life, their necessity for molting, and diagenesis. These factors lead to a limited, fragmented record which is very strongly biased. The known crabs from the Cretaceous of North America are assigned to 47 genera and 95 species. Their stratigraphic and geographic distribution are disjunct and tied directly to a few favorable lithosomes which occur throughout the Cretaceous. Taxa illustrated from several localities demonstrate the appearance and preservational range encountered in the field. The record of North American Cretaceous crabs is far from complete but at this stage it appears that the Western Interior, the Gulf Coastal Plain (and the Mississippi embayment), and the northern Atlantic Coastal Plain developed crab faunas which exhibit distinct provincialism.
