Attercopus fimbriunguis
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, spider-like animals able to produce silk, but which lacked true spinnerets and retained a segmented abdomen bearing a flagellum-like tail resembling that of a whip scorpion. They are thought to be close to the origins of spiders.

Qohelet12 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- AttercopusPBDB
- Life habit
- solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida
Time the record covers
At most 9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 387.95 Mya and 379 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Attercopus fimbriunguis on record, most of them in the Devonian. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Devonian100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
2 formations
- Panther Mountain Formation · Hamilton Group1
- Onteora Formation1
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The named rock units Attercopus fimbriunguis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Attercopus fimbriunguis and its relatives
DevonianWhere Attercopus fimbriunguis and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.
Found in the same rock
15 taxa- Aculeatarbus depressus1 site
- Arachnida1 site
- Archaeacarus dubinini1 site
- Archaeognatha1 site
- Chelicerata1 site
- Crussolum crusserratum1 site
- Devonobius delta1 site
- Dracochela deprehendor1 site
- Ecchosis pulchribothrium1 site
- Gelasinotarbus bifidus1 site
- Gelasinotarbus bonamoae1 site
- Gelasinotarbus heptops1 site
- Gelasinotarbus reticulatus1 site
- Gilboarachne griersoni1 site
- Leclercqia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Attercopus fimbriunguis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- Fossil evidence for the origin of spider spinnerets, and a proposed arachnid order1
- New terrestrial arachnids from the Devonian of Gilboa, New York (Arachnida, Trigonotarbida)1
Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Attercopus fimbriunguis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Qohelet12
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Attercopus fimbriunguis was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Attercopus”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAttercopus through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Shear et al. 1987)