The Mid Cretaceous amber deposit of North Myanmar – the Burmese amber – represents the most important deposit of biological inclusions in amber like ancient flowering plants, feathers of birds and dinosaurs, peculiar extinct spiders and numerous other arthropods including numerous unique "connecting taxa". Studies based on most “primitive” ancient insect taxa like of Blattodea, Siphonaptera and Lepidoptera as well as spiders (Araneae) – e. g. the suborder of the tailed Chimerarachnida and strange taxa of the clade Synspermiata which are treated in the five papers in this volume – allow important new conclusions on the phylogeny and on the root of several spider taxa of high level. How many unknown fossil "connecting links" are still waiting for discovery?
- Introduction and personal note 3
- Description of four new and few rare spider species from the Western Palaearctic (Araneae: Dysderidae, Linyphiidae and Theridiidae) 4
- Resurrection of the extant spider family Sinopimoidae Li & Wunderlich 2008 (Araneae: Araneoidea) 19
- Note on fossil Atypidae (Araneae) in Eocene European ambers 21
- New and already described fossil spiders (Araneae) of 20 families in Mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber with notes on spider phylogeny, evolution and classification; by J. Wunderlich & P. Müller 22
- Why do so many extinct families of spiders (Araneae) exist in the Mid Cretaceous Burmese amber and why did the diversification of araneomorph spiders happen so late and rapid? 165