Oldest common ancestor of spiders, horseshoe crabs and scorpions found in Burgess Sha

[shunyadragon]

Oldest common ancestor of spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs found in Burgess Shale. Neat picture!

Source: https://www.earth.com/news/scorpion-spider-ancestor-fossil/

The world’s oldest chelicerate, a group of predatory animals including horseshoe crabs, scorpions, and spiders, has been discovered in the Burgess Shale, located in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia. Dubbed Mollisonia plenovenatrix, paleontologists believe the fossil to be more than 500 million years old.

Despite its exoskeleton being discovered about a century ago, this new fossil exhibits more evidence of what the creature originally looked like.

“It is the first time that evidence of the limbs and other soft-tissues of this type of animal are described, which were key to revealing its affinity,” said co-author Jean-Bernard Caron, the Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The fossil shows that M. plenovenatrix would have been about the size of one’s thumb with large, egg-shaped eyes, and a “multi-tool head.” It had long legs as well as several pairs of limbs that would help it sense, grasp, crush, and chew its prey. But the most important feature of the creature is that it had a pair of “pincers” at the front of its mouth, called chelicerae, which are seen in modern scorpions and spiders.

© Copyright Original Source

[Rushing Jaws]

Does the article or its title imply that other crabs have a different ancestry ? Spiders give me the creeps, but they are amazing creatures to have survived so long.

[shunyadragon]

Does the article or its title imply that other crabs have a different ancestry ? Spiders give me the creeps, but they are amazing creatures to have survived so long.

No all crabs have the same ancestry with spiders. horseshoe crabs and scorpions.