Silk may have been used simply as a protective covering for the eggs, a lining for a retreat hole, and later perhaps for simple ground sheet web and trapdoor construction.Īs plant and insect life diversified so also did the spider's use of silk. They were probably ground dwelling predators, living in the giant clubmoss and fern forests of the mid-late Palaeozoic, where they were presumably predators of other primitive arthropods (like cockroaches, giant silverfish, slaters and millipedes). Most of the early segmented fossil spiders belonged to the Mesothelae, a group of primitive spiders with the spinnerets placed underneath the middle of the abdomen (rather than at the end as in 'modern' spiders). This spider lived 380 million years ago during the Devonian Period, more than 150 million years before the dinosaurs. The first definite spiders, thin-waisted arachnids with abdominal segmentation and silk producing spinnerets, are known from fossils like Attercopus fimbriungus. Spiders probably evolved about 400 million years ago from thick-waisted arachnid ancestors that were not long emerged from life in water.
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