I hope I didn’t make you repeat anything you previously posted about these spiders but I love the scenario you presented! It’s truly mind boggling to think that some little tree spiders hanging out within a few feet of dinosaurs munching happily on tree leaves suddenly became encased in what would become a gem stone!
And then they were discovered like a movie star! But the best part is you have them! They are soooo cool! You should enter one of them in the MM monthly contest!
Amber is pretty amazing! Invertebrates typically don’t fossilize well in sediment (which turns to rock and creates a “traditional” fossil). Their exoskeletons aren’t as tough as the bones of vertebrates, so it’s pretty rare to find good sedimentary invertebrate fossils (they exist, they’re just not that common). But amber acts like this perfect little time capsule that preserves them exactly as they were when they were covered in sap all those eons ago. It’s pretty incredible.
When I was shopping for these spiders, there was one piece for sale that featured a spider in the midst of wrapping a moth in silk. Predator and prey were frozen in time like that, it was so, so cool. Sadly, because perfect fossilized action shots like that are so rare, that piece was selling for about $5000, which was a little out of my price range.
Oh no. It turns out that fossil spiders are just as addictive as living spiders. Maybe even moreso, since you don’t need to allot space for enclosures or worry about feeding them.
…I just bought 7 more amber spiders. I think I have a problem.
On the upside, aside from a few really exceptional specimens, most amber inclusions aren’t any more expensive than living spiders, which means overall they’re less expensive, because you don’t have to set them up and feed them.
…this is how I’m justifying this latest collecting obsession to myself, anyway.
I hear ya! You don’t have to justify anything to me or yourself! I am definitely going to check these spiders out! Like you say! No feeding, housing or maintenance! I say go for it!
Careful!
Then you start looking at other cool rocks…ooh and crystals…and then some fossils…the rabbithole is just as bad as herps and just as expensive!
My dad is a geologist (his precise specialty sort of intersects with evolutionary biology), so when I was a kid, fossils were not something you purchased. Fossils were something that you hauled your butt out into the middle of nowhere to collect. If you didn’t chisel it out of a slab of limestone yourself, then it wasn’t really yours. You had to earn your fossils. So I’ve always had a fossil collection, mostly in the form of stuff like trilobites, fish, a few plants, and various shelled invertebrates I found while doing field work with my dad in places like Death Valley and the Green River Formation.
But my dad’s attitude about buying fossils has sort of mellowed as he’s gotten older, and he’s even purchased a few really nice trilobites and fish for himself. I got him a mosasaur tooth for Christmas. I guess that sort of re-ignited my love for fossils, and now I finally feel like I have “permission” to buy them and I won’t be judged too harshly for not going out to the Baltic coast and collecting my own amber inclusions.
Man I’d love to go out and find my own fossil one day. While I don’t hold bias against buying fossils (although my bank account wishes I did!), I do see that finding and cleaning up your own would be SO fulfilling!!
You should make it a point to go fossil collecting some time! There are plenty of great sites all over the US, you should look into if there are any good sites relatively close to you. You usually don’t need to travel super far to find at least something collectible. (Just make sure you’re not trespassing or inside a national park, stuff like that.)
Most of the fossils I’ve found have just been washed out loose on the ground, or I flipped over a piece of shale to reveal a bit of fern or a partial fish or something. I’ve only had to actually extract them a couple times with some fossil fish, and I had the benefit of using a rock saw (one of the perks of being with a university field group).
I don’t know if I ever posted this here, but it came up in my photo memories, so here is a 5 year old pic of my Ts little cat paws! Look at those little grabbers!
Very nice!! I didn’t know they were coloured that way as slings, I love the contrasting colours! That’s in the same genus as my P. reduncus, Dory. They’re cousins!
Here’s a fresh picture of Dory, she’s been out most of the day. I love the green on her abdomen. That’s new since her last molt.
I think I have a problem. 
