C. yingi resembles a spider, but also bears a long flagellum or tail.DINGHUA YANG
Researchers have uncovered a new species of arachnid that lived during the mid-Cretaceous age, around 100 million years ago. An international team of researchers from the United States, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom announced the discovery today (February 5) in two papers in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
“These things appear to be essentially spiders with tails!” Jason Bond, an evolutionary biologist at Auburn University in Alabama who was not involved the studies, tells Science.
The specimen, which was preserved in amber from Myanmar and closely resembles modern spiders, has a whip-like tail that is longer than its body, similar to a scorpion’s. The discovery closes a gap in the fossil record of 170 million years, the researchers report.
The team named the newly discovered ...
