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New Spider With Horned Fangs Found in Dinosaur-Era Amber
The recently discovered species hails from the late Cretaceous period and is notable for its bizarre body forms.
While creeping through a dinosaur-era forest, two spiders found themselves enveloped in a pool of tree resin. Now, after millions of years of entombment, the well-preserved pair have been identified as members of a new arachnid species.
Thought to be around 99 million years old, the ancient spiders have incredibly long projections extending from their upper shells, or carapaces, as well as complex, horned fangs.
The now extinct spider, found in a chunk of amber, was added to the Tetrablemmidae family, which includes an array of tiny, heavily armored spiders that live in tropical or subtropical regions, primarily in the Southern Hemisphere.
The researchers dubbed the ancient species Electroblemma bifida—the name in part refers to a unique doubly split tip at the end