Palaeodiversity 1: 87–92; Stuttgart, 30.12.2008. 87 The oldest available fossil arachnid name J ason a. Dunlop & Denise Jekel Abstract Aranea fusca pilosa Bloch, 1776 is the oldest available name for a fossil arachnid; i. e. the first fossil name published after clerck’s 1757 monograph using Linnean binomials. This specimen described as being from copal – the original provenance of which is unclear – does not appear to be a spider based on the published illustration, which is reproduced here. Type or other reference material associated with this name could not be traced and it is formally treated here as a nomen dubium. Other very early fossil arachnid names are briefly reviewed. Most are problematic and have been treated, like Phalangium succineum presl, 1822 or Attus fossilis Walckenaer, 1837 as nomina dubia or, like Aranea globosum presl, 1822 and Aranea oblongum (presl, 1822) as taxa of uncertain famil- ial affinity. Some, like Aranea (Chalinura) longipes Dalman, 1826, have been widely overlooked. Key words: Araneae, copal, amber, systematics. Zusammenfassung Aranea fusca pilosa Bloch, 1776 ist der älteste verfügbare Name, der nach der Monographie vom clerck (1757) mit Linneischen Binomina publiziert worden ist. Diese Art, beschrieben nach einem Fossil in Kopal, dessen Fund- ort unbekannt ist, scheint auf Grund der vorhandenen Abbildung (hier nachgedruckt) keine Spinne zu sein. Ein Typus oder andere Referenzmaterialien im Zusammenhang mit diesem Namen waren nicht zu finden, und es wird hiermit offiziell als nomen dubium behandelt. Andere frühere Namen von fossilen Spinnentieren werden kurz dis- kutiert. Viele sind problematisch und wurden wie Phalangium succineum presl, 1822 oder Attus fossilis Walcken- aer, 1837 als nomina dubia eingestuft, oder wie Aranea globosum presl, 1822 und Aranea oblongum (presl, 1822) als Taxa mit fraglicher Zuordnung behandelt. Andere, wie Aranea (Chalinura) longipes Dalman, 1826, sind einfach übersehen worden. 1. Introduction A handful of fossil arachnid names, erected for speci- mens in amber or copal, date from the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries (Bloch 1776; presl 1822; Dalman 1826; holl 1829; W alckenaer 1837). Thus they predate the first major palaeontological study of the group, namely the classic monograph on Baltic amber arachnids, myriapods and flightless insects by koch & BerenDt (1854), which also includes further species raised by menge (1854) in his footnotes to their important publication. Potentially, these pre-1854 species represent the oldest available names for the relevant taxa concerned, but in many cases they suffer from inadequate descriptions and a lack of information about the repository of the type material. These problem- atic names have, in part, been only briefly touched upon in the literature (see e. g. scuDDer 1891; roeWer 1954; petrunkevitch 1955; Bonnet 1955, 1959). As well as these inclusions in fossilised resins, two other early publications ( corDa 1835, 1839) predate koch & BerenDt’s work. Both concern scorpions from the geo- logically much older Carboniferous Coal Measures of the Czech Republic. corDa ’s species are actually quite well known, having been redescribed in some detail from their types in Prague (e. g. petrunkevitch 1953; kJellesvig- W aering 1986). A putative whip spider (Amblypygi) de- scribed from the Eocene shales of Aix-en-Provence in France by keferstein (1834) has been catalogued by har- vey (2003), who treated it as a nomen dubium. Following comments in pocock (1899) it may even be a spider, and a further true spider from the same locality and in the same keferstein publication is regarded as a nomen nudum. As part of a wider project to document and catalogue fossil spider names via an online platform (Dunlop et al. 2008), the status of the pre-1854 names based on material in fossilised resins is briefly discussed for each author in- dividually below. The focus of the present study is the oldest taxonomically available name for any fossil arach- nid: Aranea fusca pilosa Bloch, 1776. While there are even older published accounts of putative fossil spiders, Bloch’s is the first name introduced after clerck’s (1757) adoption of the binomial system. Note that the names in- troduced by clerck (a student of linnaeus ) have been ruled valid (ICZN Direction 104), even though they are older than the official 1758 date for the start of zoological nomenclature. Acknowledgements We thank christian neumann (Berlin), ralf-thomas schmitt (Berlin) and V ojtěch t urek (Prague) for advice on potential repositories, mark JuDson (Paris) for infor- mation on Dalman’s fossils, carsten lüter (Berlin) for