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Almost a spider: a 305-million-year-old fossil arachnid and spider origins

Overview of attention for article published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, March 2016
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (97th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
64 news outlets
blogs
5 blogs
twitter
96 X users
facebook
4 Facebook pages
wikipedia
19 Wikipedia pages
googleplus
5 Google+ users
video
2 YouTube creators

Citations

dimensions_citation
41 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
92 Mendeley
Title
Almost a spider: a 305-million-year-old fossil arachnid and spider origins
Published in
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, March 2016
DOI 10.1098/rspb.2016.0125
Pubmed ID
Authors

Russell J. Garwood, Jason A. Dunlop, Paul A. Selden, Alan R. T. Spencer, Robert C. Atwood, Nghia T. Vo, Michael Drakopoulos

Abstract

Spiders are an important animal group, with a long history. Details of their origins remain limited, with little knowledge of their stem group, and no insights into the sequence of character acquisition during spider evolution. We describe a new fossil arachnid,Idmonarachne brasierigen. et sp. nov. from the Late Carboniferous (Stephanian,ca305-299 Ma) of Montceau-les-Mines, France. It is three-dimensionally preserved within a siderite concretion, allowing both laboratory- and synchrotron-based phase-contrast computed tomography reconstruction. The latter is a first for siderite-hosted fossils and has allowed us to investigate fine anatomical details. Although distinctly spider-like in habitus, this remarkable fossil lacks a key diagnostic character of Araneae: spinnerets on the underside of the opisthosoma. It also lacks a flagelliform telson found in the recently recognized, spider-related, Devonian-Permian Uraraneida. Cladistic analysis resolves our new fossil as sister group to the spiders: the spider stem-group comprises the uraraneids andI. brasieri While we are unable to demonstrate the presence of spigots in this fossil, the recovered phylogeny suggests the earliest character to evolve on the spider stem-group is the secretion of silk. This would have been followed by the loss of a flagelliform telson, and then the ability to spin silk using spinnerets. This last innovation defines the true spiders, significantly post-dates the origins of silk, and may be a key to the group's success. The Montceau-les-Mines locality has previously yielded a mesothele spider (with spinnerets). Evidently, Late Palaeozoic spiders lived alongside Palaeozoic arachnid grades which approached the spider condition, but did not express the full suite of crown-group autapomorphies.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 96 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 92 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Brazil 2 2%
France 1 1%
United Kingdom 1 1%
New Zealand 1 1%
Croatia 1 1%
Unknown 86 93%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 16 17%
Student > Bachelor 16 17%
Researcher 12 13%
Student > Master 10 11%
Other 6 7%
Other 19 21%
Unknown 13 14%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 33 36%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 14 15%
Environmental Science 6 7%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 5 5%
Engineering 4 4%
Other 9 10%
Unknown 21 23%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 609. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 December 2023.
All research outputs
#37,520
of 25,554,853 outputs
Outputs from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#87
of 11,383 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#665
of 315,401 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#3
of 145 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,554,853 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,383 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 40.5. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 315,401 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 145 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.