Attercopus is an extinct genus of arachnids, containing one species Attercopus fimbriunguis, which lived throughout what is now North America during the early to middle Devonian period around 390 million years ago. The first remains assigned to Attercopus consisting of partial specimens of flattened cuticle fossils which were found in the Panther Mountain Formation in Upstate New York by professor William Albert Shear, Dr. Seldon, and collegues in the late 1980s. It was originally described as a member of the extinct order Trigonotarbida and named Gelasinotarbus? fimbriunguis. It was later assigned to a new genus Attercopus and reinterpreted as the oldest, and most primitive, example of a true spider and described as being the first user of silk in animals. This hypothesis was based on the supposed presence of unique spider features such as silk-producing spinnerets and the opening of a venom gland on the fang of the chelicerae. The name attercopus is taken from the English dialect word attercop ("spider"), which came from Old English: attorcoppa ("poison-head"), from Old English: ator ("poison"), itself drawn from the Proto-Germanic *aitra- ("poisonous ulcer") and kopp- ("head"). Further study based on new fossils from a comparable Devonian locality called South Mountain – and comparison with other material from the Permian of Russia, i.e., of Permarachne, indicates that Attercopus does not actually have spinnerets. The feature which looked like a tubular spinneret is actually a folded sheet of cuticle. It would, however, have produced silk from a series of silk gland openings, or spigots, located across plates on the underside of the abdomen. And the animal possessed a segmented tail or flagellum similar to that of a modern whip scorpion. Thus it seems unlikely that Attercopus spun webs, but it may have used its silk to wrap eggs, lay draglines or construct burrow walls. Reaching around .4” (1cm) in length not including its tail, Attercopus fimbriunguis is not a spider, but it is probably close to the type of animals which did give rise to modern spiders today.
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Attercopus fimbriunguis, from the Devonian of New York State, about 385 million years ago. This small uraraneid arachnid had an estimated bo
