Giant Ancient Spiders Get 3D Models

In a new research published in yesterday's issue of the journal Biology Letters, experts have used modern 3D reconstruction techniques to model some of the largest and most dangerous spiders that lived 359 to 299 million years ago for the first time. About the size of a 20 penny piece, the spiders were revealed with all their hunting and defense mechanisms, which allowed researchers to get a better view of how they evolved. The insects are directly related to modern-day spiders, AlphaGalileo reports.

In charge of recreating the two spider fossils – belonging to the Cryptomartus hindi and Eophrynus prestvicii species – were experts at the Imperial College London (ICL). They placed the fossilized specimens inside CT scanning devices, and took about 3,000 X-rays of each of them, until a complete 3D image was formed that showed them in extensive detail. For this effort, the scientists had to use a custom-designed video software that would handle the amount and type of data used.

“Our models almost bring these ancient creatures back to life and it’s really exciting to be able to look at them in such detail. Our study helps build a picture of what was happening during this period early in the history of life on land. We think one creature could have responded to increasing predation from the amphibians by growing spikes, while the other responded by becoming an ambush predator, hiding away and only exposing itself when it had to come out to eat,” ICL Department of Earth Science and Engineering PhD student Russell Garwood, the lead author of the new study, says.

In fact, the researcher adds, the new technology could also be used to image other fossils, of animals that lived on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. In any fossil, some of the physical traits are simply obscured by the way the animal got trapped in rocky deposits after death, but the X-ray imaging technique could help anthropologists “unfold” the creatures virtually, and analyze them on the computer, rather than by looking at the fossil itself.