Not elder law: Found! World’s oldest spider web

he tiny tangled threads of the world’s oldest spider web have beenfound encased in a prehistoric piece of amber, a British scientist saidMonday. Oxford University paleobiologist Martin Brasier said the140-million-year-old webbing provides evidence that arachnids had beenensnaring their prey in silky nets since the dinosaur age. He also saidthe strands were linked to each other in the roughly circular patternfamiliar to gardeners the world over.  Theweb was found in a small piece of amber picked up by an amateurfossil-hunter scouring the beaches on England’s south coast about twoyears ago, Brasier said. A microscope revealed the existence of tinythreads about 1 millimeter (1/20th of an inch) long amid bits of burntsap and fossilized vegetable matter.  While not as dramatic as afully preserved net of spider silk, the minuscule strands show thatspiders had been spinning circle-shaped webs well into prehistory,according to Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleobiologistuninvolved with the find.  “It’s not a striking, perfect web,”Braddy said. “(But) this seems to confirm that spiders were buildingorb webs back in the early Cretaceous” — the geological term for theperiod of time between 145.5 and 65.5 million years ago when dinosaursand small mammals shared the earth.

Source/more:  AP, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hlHHs2eR2ge36n9B8CqDnn17670AD953EC280