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Prehistoric spider attack frozen in time

By Korea Herald
Published : Oct. 9, 2012 - 10:25

(UPI/Oregon State University)


U.S. researchers have found what they say is the only fossil ever discovered of a spider attacking prey caught in its web, a 100 million-year-old “snapshot.”

In an engagement frozen in time, the extraordinarily rare fossils of the spider and its prey, a wasp, are entombed in a piece of amber, Oregon State University reported Monday.

“This juvenile spider was going to make a meal out of a tiny parasitic wasp, but never quite got to it,” said OSU zoology Professor George Poinar Jr., a world expert on insects trapped in amber.

“This was a male wasp that suddenly found itself trapped in a spider web,” Poinar said. “This was the wasp‘s worst nightmare, and it never ended. The wasp was watching the spider just as it was about to be attacked, when tree resin flowed over and captured both of them.”

An actual attack by a spider on its prey caught in a web has never before been documented as a fossil, the researchers said.

Both the spider and the wasp belong to species that are now extinct, they said. (UPI)







"영원한 적과의 동침" 절묘한 순간포착!


미국의 한 연구진이 거미 한 마리가 거미줄에 걸린 먹잇감을 덮치는 순간을 포착한 1억년 전 화석을 발견해 화제다.

오레곤주립대학교 연구진이 지난 월요일 발표한 바에 따르면 이번에 발견된 화석은 거미와 그 먹잇감인 말벌 한 마리가 호박에 그대로 파묻혀 오랜 시간 보존된 매우 희귀한 것이다.

이 분야의 권위자인 오레곤주립대 동물학교수 조지 포이나르 주니어는 거미가 말벌을 포획해 잡아먹으려는 순간 나무의 송진이 흘러나와 이 둘을 감쌌고 그대로 화석화 된 것으로 보인다고 밝혔다.

연구진에 따르면 이번에 화석에 발견된 거미와 말벌은 모두 현재 멸종된 종인 것으로 밝혀졌다. (코리아헤럴드)

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