An extremely rare collection of 160-million-year-old sea spider fossils from Southern France are closely related to living species, unlike older fossils of their kind. These fossils offer vital insights into the evolutionary journey of sea spiders, revealing that the diversity we see today began
School of Earth Sciences, said: “Sea spiders , are a group of marine animals that is overall very poorly studied.
Unlike older sea spider fossils, the La Voulte pycnogonids are morphologically similar to living species, and previous studies suggested they could be closely related to living sea spider families. But these hypotheses were restricted by the limitation of their observation means. As it was impossible to access what was hidden in the rock fossils, Dr. Sabroux and his team traveled to Paris and set out to investigate this question with cutting-edge approaches.
This confirmed that these fossils are close relatives to surviving pycnogonids. Two of these fossils belong to two living pycnogonid families:was an Endeidae. The third species,“Today, by calculating the difference between thesequences of a sample of species, and using DNA evolution models, we are able to estimate the timing of the evolution that binds these species together,“ added Dr Sabroux.
With the same approach, they will aim to redescribe these species and understand their affinities with extant species; and finally, to replace in the tree of life of Pycnogonida all the pycnogonid fossils from all periods.“This is very exciting when you have been working on the living pycnogonids for years.
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