Dinosaur age spider, wasp in amber discovery

From Wired:

100-Million-Year-Old Spider Attack Recorded in Amber

By Adam Mann

October 8, 2012 | 4:15 pm

Looks like this 100-million-year old spider didn’t get to enjoy its final meal.

Trapped in a piece of amber, the juvenile spider appears to be on the cusp of devouring a male wasp that was caught in its web. Such a grisly scene between spider and prey has never before been found in the fossil record.

The amazing snapshot shows an event that occurred in the Early Cretaceous period, about 97 to 110 million years ago, in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar, “almost certainly with dinosaurs wandering nearby,” as the press release about this discovery reports. The spider is a social orb-weaver spider, formally known as Geratonephila burmanica, and its victim is a wasp of the species Cascoscelio incassus. Both species are extinct today but the fossil suggests that insect behavior from the past is not too different from the present.

See also here.