Palpimanoid spiders from the Jurassic of China

Only two specimens of spiders have been described from Jurassic strata, so the recovery of some 400 new specimens from rocks of middle Jurassic age from China signals a dramatic increase in information on fossil spiders of this period. Here, new spiders belonging to the superfamily Palpimanoidea sensu Forster & Platnick 1984, from the locality of Daohugou, Inner Mongolia, are described. Patarchaea muralis n. gen., n. sp. is a true archaeid, represented by both an adult male and female. Sinaranea metaxyostraca n. gen., n. sp., represented by an adult male and juveniles, is a palpimanoid similar to Palpimanidae and Huttoniidae, but is not placed in a modern family.