John TImmer
NEW YORK CITY—If spiders send chills down your spine, then it's probably best if you don't go anywhere near the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Not only are spiders on prominent display on the inside, but the front arch of the main entrance is now dominated by a giant, inflatable spider.
Of course, the people behind the exhibit would tell you that if spiders give you the chills, there's no better place for you than inside the exhibit. There, amidst a fantastic collection of tarantulas and orb weavers, you can get a far better sense of just how spectacular these animals can be—and why they actually do most of us more good than harm.
People tend to assume spiders are insects, but they're actually of an independent lineage that dates back 300 million years, making us mammals look like youngsters. The exhibit itself includes a spider fossil that is about 100 million years old. There are now at least 43,000 distinct spider species recognized, and estimates are that we've only identified about half of them.
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Article by John Timmer (c) Ars Technica - Read full story here.
