Abstract
Penney, D. & Selden, P.A. (2011) Fossil Spiders: the evolutionary history of a mega-diverse order. Monograph Series, Volume 1. Siri Scientific Press, Manchester, 128 pp., 87 photographs (hardback)
Highlights
Book review: Penney D, Selden PA (2011) Fossil Spiders: the evolutionary history of a mega-diverse order
Prior to the publication of the book reviewed here, the only books dealing with fossil spiders have been primarily taxonomic monographs, such as those on Dominican and Baltic amber inclusions by Wunderlich (1988, 2004), or broader palaeobiological studies on a particular assemblage, such as Dominican amber spiders by Penney (2008)
The authors provide reasoned support for the importance of fossil spiders in addressing large-scale palaeobiological questions on a global scale, and over long periods of time, including how information on past changes in biogeographical distributions can be correlated with changes in palaeoclimatological factors and the potential of this for predicting the consequences of current climate change
Summary
Book review: Penney D, Selden PA (2011) Fossil Spiders: the evolutionary history of a mega-diverse order. The coverage of fossil spiders in books on extant spiders is usually restricted to one or two pages at most, and more often than not these include serious errors. The book begins with an introduction to spiders from a palaeontological perspective, putting their geological longevity into context of the other known fossil and extant arachnid orders, including comparative data for numbers of described extant and fossil species for all orders.
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