BBC News => Ancient Web Spins Evolutionary Story
It’s been a good month for spiders trapped in amber… well, as much anyone can say you’re having a good month when you’ve been trapped in amber 100+ million years…
Earlier this month we reported that the oldest triue orb web spinning spider had been found in amber now the oldest actual silk web and prey have been found encased in amber.
From the BBC:
The find, described in Science, sheds light on the early evolution of spiders and the insects they fed on.
The web consists of some 26 silk strands preserved in a thin layer of amber together with arachnid prey.
Although it is not intact, enough of the web structure has survived to convince its discovers – from the University of Barcelona, Spain, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York, US – that it was probably a classical wheel-shaped, or orb, web.
It is possibly the oldest spider web on record; an earlier single strand of spider silk preserved in Lebanese amber has been discovered although it is unclear if this was part of a true web.
The prey found was a parasitic wasp.
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