It is still unclassifiable. It appeared in 308-million-year-old rocks from a site in Illinois and is described in an article in the Journal of Paleontology. The strange arachnid with armored legs is barely 1.5 centimeters.
All kinds of arachnids crawled through the Carboniferous forests of North America and Europe. Some, quite strange, who belonged to groups now extinct. This new species stands out for its armored legs. It is described by Paul Selden of the University of Kansas and Jason Dunlop of the Berlin Nature Museum.

Very rare
“Douglassarachne acanthopoda comes from the famous Mazon Creek locality in Illinois.” Lead author Selden said this in a statement. It is characterized by its remarkably robust and spiny legs. It is very different from any other known arachnid, living or extinct. The geological formation of the find is an important source of information for fossil arachnids.
“Spiders were a fairly rare group, known at the time only from primitive lineages,” said co-author Dunlop. “This is a particularly impressive example of one of these extinct forms. “The very spiny legs of the fossil are reminiscent of some modern collectors.” This led the two scientists to conclude that it does not belong to any of the known arachnid orders.
«The strange arachnid with armored legs could belong to a larger group. One that includes spiders, whip spiders and whip scorpions. “It’s a time when arachnids were experimenting with a variety of different body plans.”

never described
The Mazon Creek site is one of the most important windows into life at the end of the Carboniferous. It produces a wide range of fascinating plants and animals. The current fossil was discovered in a clay and ironstone concretion in the 1980s.
“The genus name Douglassarachne recognizes the Douglass family. They donated the specimen to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago for scientific study. “It became clear that it represented an undescribed species,” Dunlop said.