They have various adaptations for catching prey, including enlarged spade-like front legs, and heads raised up on a "neck" with long chelicerae ("jaws").

Members of the families Huttoniidae, Palpimanidae and Stenochilidae have extensive scopulae on the sides of their often enlarged front legs, which enable them to both seize and manipulate prey.

[1][2] In 1984, Raymond R. Forster and Norman I. Platnick proposed that some groups previously considered araneoid actually belonged in the distantly related Palpimanoidea, including the then families Holarchaeidae, Micropholcommatidae, Mimetidae and Pararchaeidae.

Mecysmaucheniidae Archaeidae A large molecular phylogenetic study, first published online in 2016, grouped the five families in the same way, but suggested that the Palpimanoidea, together with part of the non-monophyletic Leptonetidae, were a paraphyletic group basal to the large Entelegynae clade:[1] Mecysmaucheniidae Palpimanidae Huttoniidae Stenochilidae Archaeidae Leptonetidae (part) Entelegynae Nevertheless, the authors preferred to accept the earlier conclusion based on multiple lines of evidence that the Palpimanoidea are a monophyletic group.

It is now believed that the elongated and elevated "neck" has evolved independently in these two families, as well as in the more distantly related Malkaridae (Pararchaeidae).

[9] Palpimanoids were once more widely distributed; thus 12 fossil genera of Archaeidae have been found in the Northern Hemisphere.