Nature News

World's oldest spider's web discovered in Spain

Jun 23, 2006, 15:56 GMT

Madrid - The world's oldest known spider's web with trapped insects has been discovered in Spain, showing that spiders span their nets when the dinosaurs still populated the Earth, Spanish media reported Friday. The orb web containing 26 strands was made 110 million years ago in a conifer forest near what is now Teruel in eastern Spain. The web has been preserved in a piece of amber. The longest of its strands is 5.7 millimetres long. The web contains a wasp leg, a mite, a fly and a beetle. The spider appears to have sucked out the wasp's guts, reports said. The discovery was made in 2003 and has since been analyzed by scientists in Spain and in the United States. It indicates that 'spiders have been fishing insects from the air for a very long time,' invertebrate zoology expert David Grimaldi said. Genetic reserach suggests that web-making arachnids existed as early as 136 million years ago. The Spanish discovery was to be published by the magazine Science on Friday. © 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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Anon-o-mouseJun 23rd, 2006 - 18:27:31

Why did it take three years to report that this had been found? And on a side note, I thought that spider webs were only found by walking into them

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Red RatJun 23rd, 2006 - 18:50:43

The damn web was 110 million years old, what is 3yrs. Takes a while to clean the amber and find out what is inside. You only run into webs if you don't look.

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