INTRODUCTION Amber, fossilized tree resin, is a well-known Fossil- Lagerstätte (an exceptional occurrence of well-pre- served fossil biota). Living animals become trapped in the sticky resin when it is exuded by the tree and subsequently engulfed by more resin (e.g. Penney 2002), which hardens in contact with the air. Rea- sons for trees to exude resin are not well known and may be related to wound repair, but many insects, and therefore their predators, are attracted to resin seeps. Following burial in sediment, diagenetic processes turn the resin into the fossilized amber. Resin which has been only weakly fossilized is softer and is referred to as copal. Poinar (1992) defined copal as recently deposited resin that can be distinguished from amber by its physical properties. If mouldable by hand, Poinar considered it still to be resin, if not it was classed as copal up until 3–4 Ma, by which time it should have acquired the unyielding properties of amber. Other authors have provided similarly ambiguous definitions and some authors restrict their usage of the term copal to refer only to resins from particular tree genera (see Langenheim 1995), includ- ing Hymenaea verrucosa Gaertner from which Mada- gascan copal is derived. There is considerable confusion regarding the appro- priate usage of the terms recent resin, ancient resin, copal, and sub-fossil resin, which define the various stages from resin secretion until amber formation. There is no definitive solution to the above problem because fresh resins and ambers are members of a continuous series and no objective analysis capable of determining reliably the relative maturity of fossil resins is currently available (Anderson 1996). Ander- son (1996) proposed a scale based on 14 C dating to provide a consistent nomenclature for discussing immature resins: 0–250 yrs = modern resin, recent resin, or copal; 250–5,000 yrs = ancient resin; 5,000–40,000 yrs = sub-fossil resin; >40,000 yrs = amber or fossil resin. This may seem a rather young age for considering resins as fossilized, particularly in light of previous definitions. However, as Ander- son (1996) remarked, there is no firm age definition for the term ‘fossil’ and mammoths and other extinct species of the order of a few tens of thousands of years old, are usually referred to as fossils. This issue is still open to debate, but the correct usage of these terms warrants consideration. Carbon dating results have demonstrated that copal from Madagascar can be as young as 50 years old (Poinar 1999). Spiders are well known as fossils in amber deposits but have only recently been identified and described from copal. Wunderlich (2004: 34) suggested the specimen described by Holl (1829) as Entomo- cephalus formicoides n. gen. & sp. from Baltic amber was a fake in Madagascan copal. The present loca- tion of the holotype is unknown. The description con- sisted of a single sentence, and Holl’s figure [plate 8, fig. 68a] suggests it is almost certainly a salticid belonging to an ant-mimicking genus such as Myr- marachne, although the figure and description men- tion only six eyes (Penney 2003). It was placed erro- neously in Archaeidae by Petrunkevitch (1958). 41 A new synonymy for the Madagascan copal spider fauna (Araneae, Selenopidae) David PENNEY, Hirotsugu ONO & Paul A. SELDEN ABSTRACT PENNEY, D., ONO, H. & SELDEN, P.A. 2005. A new synonymy for the Madagascan copal spider fauna (Araneae, Selenop- idae). J. Afrotrop. Zool. 2: 41-44. Garcorops jadis Bosselaers, 2004 is identified as a senior synonym of ?Anyphops cortex Wunderlich, 2004 based on the structure of the male pedipalp, particularly the form of the retrolateral tibial apophysis. The young age of Madagascan copal supports the idea that G. jadis may be a previously undiscovered extant species. The possibility that a copal inclu- sion may belong either to an extant or an extinct species highlights the importance of considering both neontological and palaeontological data when describing new taxa from copal-producing regions. D. PENNEY & P.A. SELDEN, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK (david.penney@manchester.ac.uk, paul.selden@manchester.ac.uk) H.ONO, Department of Zoology, National Science Museum, 3–23–1 Hyakunin-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan (ono@kahaku.go.jp) Keywords: amber, Anyphops, Garcorops, sub-fossil resin, taxonomy