''Palaeothele'' is an extinct

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of mesothele

spider Spiders (order (biology), order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight limbs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude spider silk, silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and ran ...

s, with only one known species ''Palaeothele montceauensis''. Two

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

s were found at

Montceau-les-Mines Montceau-les-Mines () is a Communes of France, commune in the Saône-et-Loire Departments of France, department in the Regions of France, region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France. It is the second-largest commune of the metropolitan C ...

, France, in

ironstone Ironstone is a sedimentary rock, either deposited directly as a ferruginous sediment or created by chemical replacement, that contains a substantial proportion of an iron ore compound from which iron (Fe) can be smelted commercially. Not to be c ...

concretion deposits of

Late Carboniferous Late or LATE may refer to: Everyday usage * Tardy, or late, not being on time * Late (or the late) may refer to a person who is dead Music * Late (The 77s album), ''Late'' (The 77s album), 2000 * Late (Alvin Batiste album), 1993 * Late!, a pseudo ...

( Stephanian) age, about .

Taxonomy

The genus was first named as ''Eothele'' by Paul A. Selden in 1996. However, this name had already been used for a

Cambrian The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordov ...

brachiopod Brachiopods (), phylum (biology), phylum Brachiopoda, are a phylum of animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear e ...

, so in 2000, Selden proposed the replacement name ''Palaeothele''. ''Palaeothele'' is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, "ancient", and , "nipple" – a common ending for spider names, referring to their

spinnerets A spinneret is a silk-spinning organ of a spider or the larva of an insect. Some adult insects also have spinnerets, such as those borne on the forelegs of Embioptera. Spinnerets are usually on the underside of a spider's opisthosoma, and ar ...

. The species name ''montceauensis'' refers to the location where the fossils were found.

Phylogeny

In 1996, Selden suggested the relationships shown in the cladogram below. (At the time, ''

Attercopus ''Attercopus'' is an extinct genus of arachnids, containing one species ''Attercopus fimbriunguis'', known from flattened cuticle fossils from the Panther Mountain Formation in Upstate New York. It is placed in the extinct order Uraraneida, s ...

'' was thought to be a spider; it is now considered to belong to a related but separate group, the

Uraraneida Uraraneida is an extinct order of Paleozoic arachnids related to modern Spider, spiders. Two genera of fossils have been definitively placed in this order: ''Attercopus'' from the Devonian of United States and ''Permarachne'' from the Permian of ...

.) ''Palaeothele'' is shown as sister to the modern genus '' Heptathela'' since they both have "tracheal sacs", structures adjacent to the posterior

book lungs A book lung is a type of respiration organ used for atmospheric gas-exchange that is present in many arachnids, such as scorpions and spiders. Each of these organs is located inside an open, ventral-abdominal, air-filled cavity (atrium) and co ...

References

Mesothelae Carboniferous arachnids Carboniferous arthropods of Europe Monotypic prehistoric spider genera Pennsylvanian animals of Europe {{paleo-spider-stub