The newly discovered harvestmen are the oldest in Germany and have retained their shiny appearance: A new study involving Christian Bartel and Jason Dunlop from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and Sonja Wedmann from the Senckenberg Forschungsstation Grube Messel describes several of these 48 million year old “daddy longlegs” in the international scientific journal Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments “ from the Messel mine near Darmstadt. These shimmering harvestmen now live in rainforests, which supports the classification of the Messel Pit as a subtropical to tropical forest habitat. At that time, tropical arachnids lived in Germany – and probably soon again due to climate change.