Massive New Spider with Red Fangs Found in Baja CBS News
go to original April 14, 2017

The new spider, the Sierra Cacachilas wandering spider, poses in this hairy closeup (San Diego Natural History Museum)

There’s a new spider in town: specifically, a large, cave-dwelling one found in the mountains of Baja California Sur, Mexico.

The spider was first spotted on a research expedition back in 2013 in La Paz, Baja California.

It took four years, but scientists have formally confirmed that this spider is not only a new species, but belongs to a genus never seen before. The discovery was published in the March issue of the journal Zootaxa.

“When I saw these spiders for the first time, I was very impressed by their size,” Dr. Maria Luisa Jimenez, a researcher at Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste and member of the international expedition team, said in a statement. “In all my experience over the years collecting spiders on the peninsula, I had never seen a spider this large. I suspected that something new was waiting to be described.”

The Sierra Cacachilas wandering spider is so different from other species that researchers created a new category for it, the genus Califorctenus (San Diego Natural History Museum)

The spider is in the same family as the much-feared, venomous Brazilian wandering spider. But it’s not as dangerous to humans as the Brazilian wandering spider.

Read the rest at WDEF

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