Spiders traced to single Jurassic source

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2006

WASHINGTON (AFP) — All spider cobwebs have a single origin going back 136 million years to the Jurassic period when dinosaurs roamed the planet, a US study said.

"Apparently, spiders have been fishing insects from the earth for a very long time," said study co-author David Grimaldi of the American Museum of Natural History in Science magazine.

The discovery ends a civil war between the Deinopidea and Araneoida groups of spiders for rights to the title of original web spinner on Earth.

Fossil evidence -- including a vivid 110-million year old peace of amber from Spain that shows several of the entangled insects and droplets of web "glue" -- now shows that the two groups had the same evolutionary origin.

The finds further indicate that spiders became...