... Oh, wait. brought back to life "in stunning 3D by a scientist at The University of Manchester."
I hate those press release writers...
This is actually fairly cool despite the fact that no actual spiders were actually brought back to life. Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography (VHR-CT) was used to "digitally dissect" tiny fossils thus revealing very fine detail including internal organs. Here is an example:
The same graphic in a different format can be seen here, and you can get a PDF of the paper here.
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Penny et al. 2007, 'First fossil Micropholcommatidae (Araneae), imaged in Eocene Paris amber using X-Ray Computed Tomography' appears in the current edition of Zootaxa 1623: 47-53
More like this
I've never live blogged before (well I've been alive while I've blogged, but that is different, I guess), but maybe it will make me pay more attention to the talks, so here goes nothing. Oh, and happy Hallmark(TM) Valentines day! I'll be updating these posts as the conference goes along.
Good news for science-loving fans of philately: Royal Mail have released a set of stamps to celebrate British medical breakthroughs throughout the ages.
There's a new paper in Dev Cell with a nice reconstruction of a fission yeast cell (S. pombe) with all its microtubules.
From the abstract: