Researchers
have found what they say is the only fossil ever discovered of a spider attack
on prey caught in its web – a 100 million-year-old snapshot of an engagement
frozen in time.
The
extraordinarily rare fossils are in a piece of amber that preserved this event
in remarkable detail, an action that took place in the Hukawng Valley of
Myanmar in the Early Cretaceous between 97-110 million years ago, almost
certainly with dinosaurs wandering nearby.