Scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom have used exceptionally preserved fossils of Palaeocharinus – a prehistoric spider that lived during the Devonian period, about 410 million years ago – to create the video showing the most likely walking gait of the animal.

Dr Jason Dunlop of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and Dr Russell Garwood of the University of Manchester used thin slices of rock showing the cross-section of Palaeocharinus to work out the range of motion in its limbs.

“These fossils – from a rock called the Rhynie chert – are unusually well-preserved,” Dr Dunlop said.

The scientists then used an open source computer graphic program called Blender to create the video showing the animals walking.

“When it comes to early life on land, long before our ancestors came out of the sea, these early arachnids were top dog of the food chain,” said Dr Garwood, who is the first author of a paper published in the Journal of Paleontology.

“They are now extinct, but from about 300 to 400 million years ago, seem to have been more widespread than spiders.”

“Now we can use the tools of computer graphics to better understand and recreate how they might have moved – all from thin slivers of rock, showing the joints in their legs.”

Dr Dunlop added: “this new study has gone further and shows us how they probably walked. For me, what’s really exciting here is that scientists themselves can make these animations now, without needing the technical wizardry – and immense costs – of a Jurassic Park-style film.”

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R. Garwood & J. Dunlop. The walking dead: blender as a tool for palaeontologists with a case study on extinct arachnids. Journal of Paleontology, published online July 09, 2014