I think amber biological specimens have always been an important clue to the scientific community's study of prehistoric organisms, and recently Myanmar discovered a new species of spider with a tail that looks like a scorpion trapped in amber.
Scientists have discovered that the creature was trapped in a patch of amber in the middle of the Cretaceous and now believe it is an entirely new species.
The strange discovery was made by an international team, including the University of Kansas, and published Monday in the journal Natural Ecology and Evolution. Paul Selden of Kuhn said: "Northern Myanmar produced a large amount of amber, and about a decade ago, when amber was discovered in the middle of the Cretaceous Period, its interest increased significantly; Therefore, all the insects found are of great research value. ”
What makes us feel unusual is that this creature, which was about 100 million years old, also had a long tail-like structure called a flagella at the rear end. Paul Selden, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas and one of the authors of a paper describing the creature, said: "Any form of flagella-shaped appendage is similar to something like an antenna. "This is to perceive the environment, and animals with long tails are often used for sensory purposes."
The spider has this unusual set of body parts, which has piqued the interest of researchers in the scientific community, as its discovery just happens to piece together the evolutionary history of arachnids. Past materials have found that spiders with tails have been found to lack spinneret heads, while modern spiders have spinnery heads but lack tails. While scientists describing the new species can only guess its life behavior, current advances in anatomy and the discovery of amber fossils provide them with the right clues.
Paul Selden said: "Because it is trapped in amber, we assume that it lives on or near a tree trunk." Amber is a fossil of resin, so the spider is trapped, and it may live under the bark or moss under the tree. As for its spider web weaving skills, they may be weak compared to modern spiders. Although long-tailed spiders are able to produce spider webs due to their spinish heads, it is impossible to build spider webs to catch bugs like many modern spiders. Now that we have gathered the materials, we find that like all spiders, it will be a carnivore and will eat insects. ”
Wang Bo, who worked on biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing, said he was surprised to find key fossils from the Cretaceous period. "It's a very primitive group, their relatives arrived twenty-five million years ago," he said. Each spider is about 3 mm long and has a tail length of up to 5 mm. Maybe the tail originally had sensory functions; It is covered with fluff, but the spider's lifestyle can be divided into two main categories. Namely the safari type and the settled type. Nomadic spiders that hunt, prey, have no place to live, do not tie nets at all, do not dig holes, and do not build nests. There are scaly arachnids, aphids and most tarantulas, among others. Settled type: some knotted nets, some digging burrows, some nesting, as a fixed dwelling. Such as wall money, stone spiders and so on. Spiders seem to know how to be polite, and all independent people who live independently in the camp maintain a certain distance between each other and do not invade each other. When the lifestyle change tail is no longer needed, then slowly molt the tail. This spider is the latest discovery in the Myanmar Amber Deposit, in addition to many exciting discoveries at this site, in the past few years, fully preserved mushrooms have also been found in this area in December, and researchers have even found amber ticks that may have been enjoyed on dinosaurs.