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A 50-million-year-old fossilised spider has been brought back to life ...

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Posted on: November 5, 2007 7:08 AM, by Greg Laden

... Oh, wait. brought back to life "in stunning 3D by a scientist at The University of Manchester."

I hate those press release writers...

This is actually fairly cool despite the fact that no actual spiders were actually brought back to life. Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography (VHR-CT) was used to "digitally dissect" tiny fossils thus revealing very fine detail including internal organs. Here is an example:


spider_3d_490.jpg


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The same graphic in a different format can be seen here, and you can get a PDF of the paper here.

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Penny et al. 2007, 'First fossil Micropholcommatidae (Araneae), imaged in Eocene Paris amber using X-Ray Computed Tomography' appears in the current edition of Zootaxa 1623: 47-53

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