Scientists recreate 410 million-year-old arachnid
Scientists created a video showing the most likely walking gait of the arachnid.
Scientists have used exceptionally preserved fossils to recreate the walk of one of the first land predators - a 410 million-year-old arachnid.
Researchers from the University of Manchester and the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin have used the fossils - thin slices of rock showing the animal's cross section - from the Natural History Museum in London to work out the range of motion in the limbs of this ancient and extinct early relative of spiders.
From this, and comparisons to living arachnids, the team used an open source computer graphic program called Blender to create a video showing the most likely walking gait of the animal.
The study has been published in a special issue of the Journal of Paleontology and author Dr Russell Garwood, a palaeontologist in the University of Manchester’s School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, says the work helps understand the animals better than ever before.
"When it comes to early life on land, long before our ancestors came out of the sea, these early arachnids were top dog of the food chain. They are now extinct, but from about 300 to 400 million years ago, seem to have been more widespread than spiders.
"Now we can use the tools of computer graphics to better understand and recreate how they might have moved – all from thin slivers of rock, showing the joints in their legs."
Co-author Jason Dunlop, a curator at the Museum für Naturkunde, said: “These fossils – from a rock called the Rhynie chert – are unusually well-preserved. During my PhD I could build up a pretty good idea of their appearance in life. This new study has gone further and shows us how they probably walked.
"For me, what’s really exciting here is that scientists themselves can make these animations now, without needing the technical wizardry – and immense costs – of a Jurassic Park-style film.
"When I started working on fossil arachnids we were happy if we could manage a sketch of what they used to look like; now we can view them running across our computer screens.”
You can see the video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAelbnODVbI&feature=youtu.be.
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