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Jurassic dari Cina adalah spesimen fosil terbesar yang ditemukan
Jurassic spider from China is largest fossil specimen discovered
Date:
April 22,
2011
Source:
University of Kansas Biodiversity
Institute
Summary:
With a leg span of more than five inches, a recently
named Jurassic period spider from China is the largest fossil specimen
discovered, and one that has modern relatives in tropical climates today.
.......................
With a leg span of more than five inches, a recently named
Jurassic period spider from China is the largest fossil specimen discovered,
and one that has modern relatives in tropical climates today.
A research
team of KU and Capital Normal University (Beijing) researchers said the spider
belongs to the living genus Nephila, or golden orb-weavers. An extremely
long range for any animal genus, the nephilids are example of living fossils.
Nephilids are the largest web-weaving spiders alive today (body length up to 5
cm, leg span 15 cm) and are common to the tropical and subtropical regions
today. This suggests that the paleoclimate of Daohugou, China, where the
specimen was found, was probably similarly warm and humid during the Jurassic.
Nephila females weave some of the largest orb webs known (up
to 1.5 m in diameter) with distinctive gold-colored silk to catch a wide
variety of medium-sized to large insects, but occasionally bats and birds as
by-catch. Typically, an orb-weaver spider first weaves a non-sticky spiral with
space for sticky spirals in between. Unlike most other orb-weaving spiders, Nephila
do not remove the non-sticky spirals after weaving the sticky spirals. This
results in a 'manuscript paper' effect when the orb is seen in the sunlight,
because the sticky spirals reflect the light while the non-sticky spirals do
not, thus resembling musical staves.
This fossil
finding provides evidence that golden orb-webs were being woven and capturing
medium to large insects in Jurassic times, and predation by these spiders would
have played an important role in the natural selection of contemporaneous
insects.
The research
was published in the online edition of Biology Letters. Paul A. Selden,
Gulf-Hedberg Distinguished Professor at KU and director of the Paleontological
Institute, as well as ChungKun Shih and Dong Ren, professors from Capital
Normal University, Beijing, China, authored the research.
Story
Source:
The above
story is based on materials provided by University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute. Note: Materials may be edited
for content and length.
Journal
Reference:
- P. A. Selden, C. Shih, D. Ren. A golden orb-weaver spider (Araneae: Nephilidae: Nephila) from the Middle Jurassic of China. Biology Letters, 2011; DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0228