Even millions of years ago, Australia was a paradise for spiders.
In the arid heart of the continent, scientists have found an exquisitely preserved fossil of a fascinatingly large spider that roamed and hunted in what was onceIt's not just any fossilized spider, either. It's only the fourth spider fossil ever to be found in Australia, and the first, worldwide, of a spider belonging to the large brush-footed trapdoor spider family, Barychelidae.
The assemblage is so exceptional that it has been classified as a Lagerstätte – a sedimentary fossil bed that sometimes preserves soft tissues.Artist's reconstruction ofThe type of rock found in the fossil bed makes the whole assemblage even more amazing: it's a type of iron-rich rock called "Scanning electron microscopy allowed us to study minute details of the claws and setae on the spider's pedipalps, legs and the main body," explains virologist Michael Frese of the University of Canberra, who scanned the fossils using stacking microphotography.
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