Jurassic Park strikes again as an ancient spiderweb is found encased in amber.
Whilst we may have all seen the effects of drugs on spiders, there has never been as much excitement as was in the Oxford University when researchers found the remains of a 140 million year old web, and they’re still roughly the same shape.
Our old friend, the amber encasement, was able to seal the web away from the rigors of nature and the rough circular nature of the web is familiar to anyone with a loft.
The piece of amber came from an amateur fossil hunter beach-combing over two years ago. It’s taken this long to actually find the threads, using a microscope.
The threads themselves have long fallen from their normal pattern, but it does prove that the webs you may have seen in your dungeon-bashing have their roots as far back as the Cretaceous period, 65-145 million years ago.
Published: Dec 16, 2008 11:37 am