Scientists say a 305 million-year-old fossil is the closest relative to "true spiders" ever discovered - but is not itself a spider.
Easily pre-dating the dinosaurs, the 1.5cm creature lived alongside the oldest known ancestors of modern spiders but its lineage is now extinct.
The specimen was dug up decades ago in France but never identified, because its front half was encased in rock.
Now, researchers have made a detailed reconstruction using CT scans.
Their findings are reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
"This fossil is the most closely related thing we have to a spider that isn't a spider," said first author Russell Garwood from the University of Manchester.
Legs and jaws
Now christened Idmonarachne brasieri, the arachnid was among "a box full of fossils" that Dr Garwood's co-author Paul Selden, from the University of Kansas in the US, had borrowed from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris in the 1980s.
It originally came from a rich region of fossil-bearing deposits near Montceau les-Mines, in eastern France.=read more on bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35918234
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