Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Awhile back I mentioned the discovery of a 120-115 million year old orb weaver trapped in amber. National Geographic and New Scientistboth have a story on a spider web trapped in amber. The find dates to about 110 mya.
If you look closely you will notice there are some insects still entangled in the web! From New Scientist:
Palaeontologists who found the amber sliced it into three thin sections, revealing at least 26 silk strands, some interconnected. The web is not complete enough to be firmly identified as an orb web, with a spiral strand wound on radial spokes. But Grimaldi says the fragments are consistent with orb webs. "It's a geometrically complex web, certainly not a random assortment of strands like a cobweb. It was certainly in one plane," he told New Scientist.
Comments
Fossil Spider Webs! Too cool. (Okay, not fossils, but still...)
Posted by: theRidger | June 24, 2006 7:08 AM