{"id":71771,"date":"2025-07-18T04:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T04:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/71771\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T04:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T04:56:10","slug":"this-jurassic-era-relic-has-survived-150-million-years-on-earth-now-its-one-big-fire-from-extinction-kangaroo-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/71771\/","title":{"rendered":"This Jurassic-era relic has survived 150 million years on Earth \u2013 now it\u2019s one big fire from extinction | Kangaroo Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last five weeks, Jane Ogilvie has searched a patch of dense shrub shaded by sugar gums on Kangaroo Island<\/a> in South Australia for a surviving relic from 150m years ago.<\/p>\n

The only known home of the critically endangered Kangaroo Island assassin spider is in the north-west of the island, where the Jurassic-era spider hides out in moist clumps of leaf litter.<\/p>\n

In more than a month of searches, and with just a couple more weeks to go, Ogilvie and a few helpers have only found one tiny juvenile.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get so excited when we find a good area but then it\u2019s deflating. Everything is so dry \u2013 it\u2019s hardly rained for two years,\u201d says Ogilvie, a conservation biologist working with the charity Invertebrates<\/a> Australia.<\/p>\n

Last year, scientists found just one mature female and six juveniles at six locations, all in a 20 sq km area that includes a block of land owned by mining billionaire Andrew Forrest.<\/p>\n

Those same locations have come up blank this year. The spiders need the moist microclimate of the leaf litter to survive, but there\u2019s a trifecta of threats drying out their habitat and pushing them ever closer to extinction.<\/p>\n

The spider\u2019s last remaining bolthole has been through near-record drought over the last 18 months, with rainfall among the lowest on record since 1900.<\/p>\n

The black summer bushfires burned through large areas of potential habitat that have not yet recovered, and an invasive plant root disease known as phytophthora is damaging the forest canopy and the plants that hold some of the leaf litter where the spiders live, drying out the habitat even further.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we look at the risks and [are] realistic, they\u2019re potentially one big fire away from extinction,\u201d says Dr Michael Rix, the principal scientist and curator of arachnology at the Queensland Museum, who collected the first specimens of the spider and, with scientific colleague Mark Harvey, formally described them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy all objective measures, its existence is phenomenally precarious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Natural-born assassins<\/p>\n

The Kangaroo Island assassin spider is one of 11 invertebrates<\/a> on the federal government\u2019s priority list of threatened species.<\/p>\n

The assassin family of spiders \u2013 which get their name from their habit of slowly stalking and then eating other spiders \u2013 are found only in Australia, Madagascar and parts of southern Africa.<\/p>\n

Kangaroo Island\u2019s assassin was found in 2010 by Rix, who, along with Harvey, has described 37 of Australia\u2019s 41 assassin spiders.<\/p>\n

A researcher samples elevated leaf litter in the understory of a forest by a creek line on Kangaroo Island in the search for assassin spiders. Photograph: Jane Ogilvie<\/p>\n

\u201cWe collect this suspended leaf litter and shake it. The spiders close their legs and they drop down. I looked in the tray to see what\u2019s there \u2013 I knew it was undescribed. It was one of the really memorable moments of my field biology career. Very exciting,\u201d he remembers.<\/p>\n

Rix says they have the most unusual appearance of any spider, with \u201cincredible elevated heads and long spear-like mouth parts\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re unmistakeable,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re an early branch in the spider\u2019s tree of life. Assassin spiders are ancient and those around today are survivors of 150m years of life on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were only known as fossils before any living ones were found in Madagascar in the 19th century.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018It\u2019s being squeezed\u2019<\/p>\n

Kangaroo Island\u2019s species was feared extinct after bushfires swept across the west of the island in the black summer bushfires of 2019 and 2020 until Dr Jess Marsh, a research fellow at the University of Adelaide and an invertebrate conservation biologist based on the island, found two specimens in 2021 in a small patch of unburned vegetation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas,\u201d says Marsh. \u201cEach survey we do is increasing our confidence that its restricted to this patch of vegetation, and nowhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers worry that the Kangaroo Island assassin spider is being \u2018squeezed out\u2019 of it\u2019s natural habitat. Photograph: Jess Marsh<\/p>\n

Marsh and colleagues are now discussing the idea of establishing a breeding program for the spiders in a zoo, creating an \u201cinsurance population\u201d \u2013 but removing individuals from the wild carries clear risks that Marsh says wouldn\u2019t be taken lightly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve survived mass extinction events and past climate changes \u2013 a huge amount. Now in this short period of time, it\u2019s humans that are really testing them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghost extinctions<\/p>\n

Rix says the precarious situation the spiders find themselves in is part of a much bigger wave of largely unseen extinctions of invertebrates.<\/p>\n

Officially, Australia lists only one invertebrate as extinct \u2013 the Lake Pedder earthworm.<\/p>\n

But last year, Rix, Marsh and colleagues released research that estimated that since the European invasion of Australia, about 9,000 invertebrates<\/a> had likely suffered a so-called ghost extinction \u2013 \u201cthe loss of undiscovered species that have left no trace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people might say, \u2018who cares about a tiny spider going extinct\u2019?\u201d says Rix. \u201cBut this is part of the quantum of invertebrate extinctions that we\u2019re experiencing right now. This might be a problem that creeps up on us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a concept of conserving evolutionary significant units \u2013 retaining diversity that speaks deeply to Earth\u2019s evolutionary history. That is what these spiders are \u2013 a window into the past. They\u2019re survivors. Trying to conserve them is so important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marsh and Rix were the only two people to have ever found a Kangaroo Island assassin spider, until this week\u2019s discovery \u2013 not by a scientist, but an enthusiastic 17-year-old volunteer called Jack Wilson who was filling his time during school holidays.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was probably my 10th sieve of the day,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can look like little blobs of dirt, but it\u2019s the big neck that gives them away. I\u2019m pretty chuffed. It\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the last five weeks, Jane Ogilvie has searched a patch of dense shrub shaded by sugar gums…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":71772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-71771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114872463037205790","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}