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Article
Open AccessThe exceptional preservation of Aix-en-Provence spider fossils could have been facilitated by diatoms
Much of our understanding of the history of life on Earth comes from fossil sites with exceptional preservation. Here, we use microscopy and chemical analysis of spiders found in the Oligocene Aix-en-Provence ...
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Article
Cretaceous arachnid Chimerarachne yingi gen. et sp. nov. illuminates spider origins
Spiders (Araneae) are a hugely successful lineage with a long history. Details of their origins remain obscure, with little knowledge of their stem group and few insights into the sequence of character acquisi...
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Article
Open AccessPermian scorpions from the Petrified Forest of Chemnitz, Germany
Paleozoic scorpions (Arachnida: Scorpiones) have been widely documented from the Carboniferous Period; which hosts a remarkable assemblage of more than sixty species including both putative stem- and crown-gro...
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Article
Penis morphology in a Burmese amber harvestman
A unique specimen of the fossil harvestman Halitherses grimaldii Giribet and Dunlop, 2005 (Arachnida: Opiliones) from the Cretaceous (ca. 99 Ma) Burmese amber of Myanmar reveals a fully extended penis. This is th...
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Article
Arachnids from the Carboniferous of Russia and Ukraine, and the Permian of Kazakhstan
New finds of Late Palaeozoic arachnids, based on three well-preserved carapaces from the Carboniferous of Russia and Ukraine and one complete, albeit poorly preserved, specimen from the Permian of Kazakhstan, ...
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Article
Open AccessA giant spider from the Jurassic of China reveals greater diversity of the orbicularian stem group
A large female spider, Nephila jurassica, was described from Middle Jurassic strata of north-east China and placed in the modern genus Nephila (family Nephilidae) on the basis of many morphological similarities, ...
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Article
Kodymirus and the case for convergence of raptorial appendages in Cambrian arthropods
Kodymirus vagans Chlupáč and Havlíček in Sb Geol Ved Paleontol 6:7–20, 1965 is redescribed as an aglaspidid-like arthropod bearing a single pair of enlarged raptorial appendages, which are shown ...
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Article
Open AccessBabes in the wood – a unique window into sea scorpion ontogeny
Few studies on eurypterids have taken into account morphological changes that occur throughout postembryonic development. Here two species of eurypterid are described from the Pragian Beartooth Butte Formation...
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Water-to-Land Transitions
Arthropods are, by a considerable margin, the most species-rich group of animals alive today and have long been a major component of the Earth’s biodiversity. Exact counts of the total number of species are no...
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Article
Crustaceans from bitumen clast in Carboniferous glacial diamictite extend fossil record of copepods
Copepod crustaceans are extremely abundant but, because of their small size and fragility, they fossilize poorly. Their fossil record consists of one Cretaceous (c. 115 Ma) parasite and a few Miocene (c. 14 Ma...
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Article
The oldest haplogyne spider (Araneae: Plectreuridae), from the Middle Jurassic of China
New fossil spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) from Middle Jurassic (ca. 165 Ma) strata of Daohugou, Inner Mongolia, China are described as Eoplectreurys gertschi gen. et sp. nov. and referred to the modern haplogyne fa...
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Article
Harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones) from the Middle Jurassic of China
Harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones) are familiar animals in most terrestrial habitats but are rare as fossils, with only a handful of species known from each of the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. Fossi...
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Article
Calibrating the chelicerate clock: a paleontological reply to Jeyaprakash and Hoy
Divergence times inferred for major lineages of Chelicerata (scorpions, spiders, mites, pycnogonids and xiphosurans) in a recent paper on mitochondrial phylogeny by Jeyaprakash and Hoy are compared to the know...
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Chapter
Der Rhynie Chert, Unter-Devon, Schottland
Die verkieselten Ablagerungen von Rhynie, der sogenannte „Rhynie Chert“, mit seinen vorzüglich erhaltenen Pflanzen und Arthropoden, wurden von Dr. W. Mackie 1912 als Steine in Mauern und als lose Blöcke auf Fe...
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Article
New morphological and host data for the ectoparasitic larva of Leptus hidakai Kawashima (Acari, Acariformes, Erythraeidae)
The larva of Leptus hidakai Kawashima is redescribed. This species, previously only known from its type-locality in Japan, is recorded for the first time from the uloborid spider Miagrammopes singaporensis Kul...
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Article
Fossil mesothele spiders
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Article
Coprolites as evidence for plant–animal interaction in Siluro–Devonian terrestrial ecosystems
A FEW remarkable finds document the colonization of land by animals and plants in the mid-Palaeozoic1–3, but much rarer is unequivocal evidence for plant–animal interaction4,5. Here we announce the discovery of c...
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Article
Orb-web weaving spiders in the early Cretaceous
THE use of a snare woven from spun silk as a means of capturing prey is the most outstanding achievement of spiders. Fossil spider spinnerets are known from the Devonian1 and Carboniferous2 periods. Presented her...
