Spider with tail found trapped in amber
Paris : Two teams of scientists on Monday unveiled a “missing-link” species of spider with a scorpion-like tail found perfectly preserved in amber in Southeast Asia’s forests after at least 100 million years.
In studies published side-by-side in Nature Ecology and Evolution, one team argued that male sex organs and silk thread-producing teats link the creature to living spiders.
The other team pointed to the long tail and a segmented body to argue that Chimerarachne yingi belongs instead to a far more ancient and extinct lineage at least 380 million years old.
Either way, the researchers agree that C. yingi fills a yawning gap in the evolutionary saga of the nearly 50,000 species of spiders that spin webs and trap prey around the world today.
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