oldest known insect -- AMIGA Astronomy

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Subject: oldest known insect

Author:
Morris Harrell

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Date Posted: 01:19:22 02/12/04 Thu

A tiny fossil preserved in red sandstone from Scotland has been identified as the oldest known insect.

The fossil suggests insects were among the earliest animals to live on land and that winged flight may have emerged earlier than previously thought.

The fragmentary specimen from Rhynie in Aberdeenshire comes from deposits dated to between 396 and 407 million years old, during the Devonian Period.

The Rhynie cherts were deposited under unusual conditions. Hot springs and geysers fed the area with fluids rich in dissolved silica.

As the hot water cooled, the mineral silica crystallised, entombing the animals and creating a 3D impression of their bodies.

Many deposits of this age are formed when different layers of material press down on each other, squashing fossils contained in them.

Previously, the oldest known insect was a wingless specimen of the species Archaeognatha or Zygentoma, fragments of which are preserved in 379 million-year-old rocks from New York, US.

The findings agree with a DNA study by Michael Gaunt and Michael Miles of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London.

The study estimated that insects emerged about 434 million years ago, in the early Silurian.

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