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Ray Forster
Raymond Robert Forster (19 June 1922 – 1 July 2000) was a New Zealand arachnologist and museum director. He was a Fellow of the Entomological Society of New Zealand. Biography Forster was born in Hastings, New Zealand in 1922, and was educated at Victoria University College, gaining BSc, MSc(Hons) and DSc degrees. Forster was an entomologist at the National Museum in Wellington from 1940 to 1947, with an interruption for military service during World War II. Between 1942 and 1945 he served first in the army and then as a naval radar mechanic.Ray Forster obituary . International Society of Arachnology. Retrieved 14 February 2013. He was appointed zoologist and assistant director at Canterbury Mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeidae
Archaeidae, also known as assassin spiders and pelican spiders, is a spider family with about ninety described species in five genera. It contains small spiders, ranging from long, that prey exclusively on other spiders. They are unusual in that they have "necks", ranging from long and slender to short and fat. The name "pelican spider" refers to these elongated jaws and necks used to catch their prey. Living species of Archaeidae occur in South Africa, Madagascar and Australia, with the sister family Mecysmaucheniidae occurring in southern South America and New Zealand. Assassin spiders were first known from 40 million year old amber fossils which were found in Europe in the 1840s, and were not known to have living varieties until 1881, when the first living assassin spider was found in Madagascar. The fossil record of this family was first identified from Baltic amber dating to the Eocene, although many taxa from these deposits have been reassigned to Mecysmaucheniidae, Malka ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spiders Described In 1956
Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every land habitat. , 50,356 spider species in 132 families have been recorded by taxonomists. However, there has been debate among scientists about how families should be classified, with over 20 different classifications proposed since 1900. Anatomically, spiders (as with all arachnids) differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax or prosoma, and the opisthosoma, or abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel, however, as there is currently neither paleontological nor embryological evidence that spiders ever had a separate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
