Saturday, June 24, 2006

110-million-year-old spider web found in amber

A team of researchers has found a 110-million-year-old spider web embedded in a piece of amber ? the oldest known example of a web containing trapped insects.

Tela-de-arana-2006062316210904xm1.jpgIt appears to be an orb web, like the spiral nets made by common garden spiders to catch flying insects, according to a report published Friday in the journal Science. ... Caught within the tangles of the glue-dotted web were a fly, a mite, a beetle and a wasp leg.

... The amber, found in Spain, is from the early Cretaceous period ? a time when dinosaurs roamed and insects were explosively diversifying.? - more

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