An Extraordinary New Family of Spiders from Caves in the Pacific Northwest

These undated photos from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco show the fearsome claw of a new family of spider, which led to naming it Trogloraptor, or cave robber. A group of amateur spelunkers found it in a cave outside Grants Pass, Oregon in 2010. They sent specimens to the Academy, where scientists had never seen anything like it. Since then, scientists have found a related species in the Redwoods of Northern California. The discovery is described in an article published Friday in the online edition of the journal Zookeys. (Calfornia Academy of Sciences) Continue reading »