This week I have another mystery object for you from the Dead Zoo decant:
This week the team has been wrapping and packing arthropods, so here’s one for you to have a go at identifying. Have fun!
Friday mystery object #393
Zygoma
Adventures in natural history collections
Zygoma 
Here’s help with scale via the Matterport 3D Virtual Visit of Dublin Dead Zoo:
https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=uqUpfcNqQ3L&sr=-1.43,-.96&ss=7
Slim Aranea, the poor man’s lobster?
looks like a spider crab (eeek!)
Macropodia rostrata?
M tenuirostris?
Too bald to be a YETI… i believe it’s a deep denizen all the same.
Should we assume from this photo (and the one Goatlips linked in the first comment) that the pigments in crustacean “shells” fade with time?
Most pigments fade in excess sunlight and this has been on display under a glass roof for a century, so it’s pretty bleached!
I’ll go along with Joe Vans’s thought that it is a “deep denizen”: the delicate walking legs certainly suggest something that habitually picks its way around in the calmer waters of the ocean depths, and not something that has to cope with the “high energy” environment of the surf zone.
Allen, if it is indeed the “Slim Aranea, the poor man’s lobster” I suspect, then some of the photos of the species online were also pale, but others were chestnut coloured, which I think they usually are.
They’re in the Inachidae (spider crab) family, which seems to consist of 38 genera and almost 1000 species. You might be able to reduce it to the Macropodia genus, which contains 20 species (possibly including the extinct):
http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=205077
Yep. Japanese Spider Crab?
The Inachidae (spider crab) family has been confirmed by Mr.V on Twitter. This specimen can fit in the palm of your hand.
https://mobile.twitter.com/PaoloViscardi/status/1316997498851020800
There’s similar Irish crabs on the ground floor (the ground floor is all Irish specimens?):
https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=rHqMPpFRgjc&back=1&sr=-.76,.92&ss=65
But I’m sure the mystery object is on the 3rd floor, via my previous link.