This story began this spring, when the world media reported on the discovery of a perfectly preserved fossil of a large spider in the Lower Cretaceous deposits of Inner Mongolia. The find was described as a new species of Mongolorachne chaoyangensis and became the subject of research by specialists.
The locals who allegedly found the fossil sold the fossil to a scientist at the Dalian Natural History Museum in Liaoning, China, who published a description of the fossil in Acta Geologica Sinica, a peer-reviewed journal of the Geological Society of China.
Paleontologists from Beijing, who saw the photos of the spider, were surprised by the strange appearance of the fossil and recruited Paul Selden, a famous paleontologist from the United States who specializes in fossil spiders, to analyze it.
Selden at first glance suspected that something was wrong with the spider: its legs consisted of too many segments. In addition, the Mongol Arachna had large eyes, which was atypical for spiders even in the Mesozoic. But the creature suspiciously resembled an ancient cancer.
Establishing the final truth required the study of the fossil using fluorescence microscopy methods, when different materials glow in different colors. Selden and his colleagues were able to identify four colors that correspond to different substances. Two of them were genuine: the breed itself. in which an arthropod was petrified, and the remains of its cuticle (shell). And the other two were modern: the authors of the forgery neatly covered the extra limbs (the crustaceans have a couple more of them) with cement and touched up something with paint. The result is a spider from cancer.
Apparently, the Chinese workers understood that they would not get much for a fossil cancer - there are many of them in those parts. But the spider is for wealth.
It should be noted here that the extinct genus Mongolarachne consists of two species today. We just wrote about one of them - it is a fake. And the second - Mongolarachne jurassica - was found in 2013 in about the same area.
For details, see an article published in Palaeoentomology.
Promotional video:
Sergey Sysoev