Eoplectreurys
genus of spiders
Eoplectreurys is an extinct monotypic genus of spider from the family Plectreuridae, with a sole species, Eoplectreurys gertschi. The fossils of Eoplectreurys were recovered from the ~164 Ma old Middle Jurassic Daohugou formation tuffs in Inner Mongolia, China.
History and classification
The type specimens are deposited in the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology with the genus being described from a total of seven adult spiders. Eoplectreurys was first studied and described by Drs Paul Selden and Diying Huang, who published their type description in the journal Naturwissenschaften in 2010. The genus name is a combination of the Greek word eos, which means "dawn", and Plectreurys the name of the modern genus which the fossils closely resemble.
Eoplectreurys is considered the oldest described spider genus of the Haplogynae series, predating the described Haplogynae spiders from Cretaceous ambers in Jordan and Lebanon, and is the oldest member of Plectreuridae. The two other Plectreuridae species described from fossils are both known from specimens preserved in amber with Palaeoplectreurys baltica from Eocene Baltic amber and Plectreurys pittfieldi from early Miocene Dominican amber. The modern distribution of Plectreuridae is restricted to Southwestern North America, Central America, and parts of the Greater Antilles. The current restricted range of the family may be due to either the severe cooling at the Eocene–Oligocene transition or the Pliocene–Pleistocene ice age.
Description
The specimens of Eoplectreurys are preserved as compression fossils in the fine-grained lacustrian rocks and thus have been flattened from their dimensions in life.
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