Cenotextricella
| Cenotextricella simoni Temporal range: Eocene
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| Genus: | Cenotextricella Penney, 2007
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| Species: | C. simoni
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| Cenotextricella simoni Penney, 2007
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Cenotextricella simoni is a fossil spider species from Eocene amber (c. 53 million years ago) from the Paris Basin in France. The male is only about one millimeter long. A female has not yet been discovered. It is the first fossil record of the family Micropholcommatidae, and the only described species in the genus Cenotextricella. Recent species only occur in the Southern Hemisphere, in Australia and South America.[1]
The spider probably lived in semi-deciduous or deciduous woodland near a river, in a warm climate with wet and dry seasons.
Like all species of the family it has eight eyes.
Name
The genus name is a combination of ceno (from Cenozoic, where the type species originates), and the closely allied extant genus Textricella. The species is named in honor of famous French arachnologist Eugène Simon (1848–1924).
Footnotes
- ^ Penney et al. 2007
References
- Platnick, Norman I. (2007): The world spider catalog, version 8.0. American Museum of Natural History.
- Penney, David; Dierick, Manuel; Cnudde, Veerle; Masschaele, Bert; Vlassenbroeck, Jelle; van Hoorebeke, Luc & Jacobs, Patric (2007): First fossil Micropholcommatidae (Araneae), imaged in Eocene Paris amber using X-Ray Computed Tomography. Zootaxa 1612: 47-53. PDF Abstract