Interesting
It comes from fossil-rich amber deposits discovered in the Aragon region of northeastern Spain about seven years ago .
According to the authors, the new find is not only the oldest but also the first known substantial fossilized section of spider web.
The partial web includes 26 strands of silk, some of them joined by cross links, Grimaldi says, which are typical of orb-weaving spider webs.
The only sample comparable to the find is a piece of Lebanese amber 130 million years old that holds a single strand of spider silk.
Both specimens formed during the early Cretaceous period, a time when creatures such as iguanadons were on the scene but well before the arrival of Tyrannosaurus rex.
While there was no spider present in the latest find, the amber did contain a mite, a beetle, a leg from a wasp, and a fly caught by the spider's silk.
The discovery, Grimaldi says, helps researchers understand the evolution of both spiders and their prey.
For example, a long history of hanging webs would mean spiders have been influencing the evolution of flying insects for millions of years.
The discovery of the kite that could fly in the air by the Chinese started humans thinking about flying. Kites were used by the Chinese in religious ceremonies. They built many colorful kites for fun, also. More sophisticated kites were used to test weather conditions. Kites have been important to the invention of flight as they were the forerunner to balloons and gliders.
For many centuries, humans have tried to fly just like the birds and have studied the flight of birds. Wings made of feathers or light weight wood have been attached to arms to test their ability to fly. The results were often disastrous as the muscles of the human arms are not like a birds and cannot move with the strength of a bird.
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