News — New research

We are very pleased to announce the formal publication of our latest title: Fossil Spiders in Baltic Amber: An annotated systematic catalogue by Dr David Penney. Click cover to go to product page and order your discounted copy now From the back cover With 557 named spider species in 202 genera and 58 families, Baltic amber represents the richest source of fossil spiders anywhere on the planet, with research describing this remarkable fossil fauna dating back more than 200 years. The identification of numerous species is problematic because many of the older descriptions are inadequate by current taxonomic standards. To...

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new invited review paper concerning the application of new imaging techniques in the study of fossil spiders. The paper, written by Dr Paul Selden (University of Kansas) and Dr David Penney (Siri Scientific Press and University of Manchester) was published in the high impact journal Earth-Science Reviews and can be accessed by clicking the link at the end of this short article. These authors have a long history or working together on fossil spiders, which occur as both fossils preserved in amber and as compression fossils in rock. In 2002 they...

These are exciting times for British palaeontology, with new important discoveries being documented in the scientific literature on a reasonably frequent basis. Some recent examples that spring to mind include the new Welsh theropod dinosaur Dracoraptor hanigani, the new ichthyosaur species Eileanchelys waldmani from the Isle of Skye, Scotland and most recently the description of two new species of Ichthyosaurus, by Dean Lomax and Judy Massare, in a paper just published in the journal Papers in Palaeontology. Dean is well known as the co-presenter of the TV documentary Dinosaur Britain and also as co-author of our highly acclaimed book: Dinosaurs of...

Love them or loathe them, spiders seem to be all over the place, whether it be sitting on a flower head, hanging in the middle of a beautifully geometric orb web or scuttling across your floor. But ... have you ever stopped to wonder how many different types there are? Even in the UK most people can probably only recognize a handful of different types. For example, the common house spider, the daddy-long-legs spider, the common garden spider, the zebra jumping spider (seen on walls on sunny days), and possibly a few others. Author of the blog with a giant...

This is the second blog post in a series resulting from attending the 7th International Conference on Fossil Insects, Arthropods and Amber and concerns new fossils described from Mexican amber. A fabulous fossil insect preserved in Miocene Mexican amber At the meeting we met up with many of the world’s leading palaeoentomologists who have published their work with Siri Scientific Press. Without doubt the leading authority on fossils preserved in Mexican amber is Monica Solorzano-Kraemer from the Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum, Frankfurt, Germany. Monica wrote the chapter on Mexican amber in our Biodiversity of Fossils in Amber from the Major...