A 49 million years old spider has now revealed its face to the world, high-tech X-ray methods were used by scientists to look narrowly through the shroud of amber enclosing the fossilized arachnid.
The report which was published online on April 28 in the journal Naturwissenschaften, verified that the ancient spider is one of the genus Euspar(–foul word(s) removed–)us. These spiders are also knows as Huntsman spiders, they live in the tropics and Southern Europe. They can grow almost a foot (0.3 meters), from leg to leg.
These arachnids are non-toxic and non-aggressive to human, but they can cause a painful bite.
The fossilized ancient spider, which is homed in the Berlin Natural History Museum, is buried in a darkened chunk of amber and barely visible. Using the high-tech method called X-ray computed tomography, researchers from the United Kingdom and Germany produced three-dimensional images and movies of the spider inside the amber.
The result of the X-ray images shows fangs eyes, and “pedipalps”, or the feelers on the spider’s face.
To reveal other fossilized spiders they also used the same method.
The Huntsman fossil was found in the 1800s. Naturalists then suspected that the arachnid was a Huntsman, but modern researchers thought it strange that such an active, large spider would be trapped in the tree. But by comparing the specimen to others fossils and moderns spider, they identified that the ancient fossil is really a Huntsman.
According to study researcher David Penney of the University of Manchester ,”The research is particularly exciting because our results show that this method works and that other scientifically important specimens in historical pieces of darkened amber can be investigated and compared to their living relatives in the same way,”