Selden

Benjamin Royer is an Angeleno who will graduate in May with a master’s degree in specialized journalism from USC, where he received the Selden Ring Investigative Journalism Fellowship.

The ancient critter recently was described in a new paper published in the Journal of Paleontology, co-written by Paul Selden from the University of Kansas and the Natural History Museum of London and Jason Dunlop from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

"Douglassarachne acanthopoda comes from the famous Mazon Creek locality in Illinois and is about 308 million years old," said lead author Selden.

"Unfortunately, details such as the mouth parts cannot be seen, which makes it difficult to say exactly which group of arachnids are its closest relatives, Selden said. "It could belong to a wider group, which includes spiders, whip spiders and whip scorpions.

“������ you typically expect in a wildfire is that you’re going to have a range, and there are going to be some that are quite straightforward and some that are more challenging,” Selden said.