Amber preserves 100-million-year-old half-spider, half-scorpion hybrid creature

Researchers have made a very special discovery in amber. They have found a creature that is half spider and half scorpion.

Nanjing – Amber is one of the oldest gemstones in the world. They are made of fossilized resin from trees and shrubs. Traces of prehistoric mushrooms, fruits or plants and animals are often enclosed within the small stones. While many vacationers on the Baltic and North Seas try their luck and go in search of amber, the golden-yellow resin fossil is also the subject of science. Two independent research teams recently made a very special discovery in amber. In four specimens, the researchers discovered trapped animals that look like a cross between a spider and a scorpion.

The discovery “could help fill in major gaps in our understanding of spider evolution,” said Prashant Sharma, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin. The newly discovered animal can be assigned to the group of arachnids. This group includes eight-legged invertebrates such as scorpions, ticks, and spiders.

Two different teams examined amber

The two teams led by Wang Bo from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology and Huang Diying discovered the spider scorpions simultaneously but independently. Despite some differences in their approaches, “they come to the same conclusion that the fossil Uraranids, as this group is called, are the spiders’ closest extinct relatives,” says Greg Edgecombe, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

“The level of preservation is excellent and the anatomy of the fossils is easy to interpret,” says the expert. Some features therefore indicate that they arose “very early” in the evolution of arachnids. More amber fossils of this species need to be analyzed to draw further conclusions about the age of the fossils and the evolutionary history of the spider. (ebb)