New light shed on the oldest insect

Michael S. Engel () and David A. Grimaldi
Additional contact information
Michael S. Engel: University of Kansas
David A. Grimaldi: American Museum of Natural History

Nature, 2004, vol. 427, issue 6975, 627-630

Abstract: Abstract Insects are the most diverse lineage of all life in numbers of species, and ecologically they dominate terrestrial ecosystems. However, how and when this immense radiation of animals originated is unclear. Only a few fossils provide insight into the earliest stages of insect evolution, and among them are specimens in chert from Rhynie, Scotland's Old Red Sandstone (Pragian; about 396–407 million years ago1), which is only slightly younger than formations harbouring the earliest terrestrial faunas. The most well-known animal from Rhynie is the springtail Rhyniella praecursor (Entognatha; Collembola), long considered to be the oldest hexapod2,3. For true insects (Ectognatha), the oldest records are two apparent wingless insects from later in the Devonian period of North America4,5. Here we show, however, that a fragmentary fossil from Rhynie, Rhyniognatha hirsti, is not only the earliest true insect but may be relatively derived within basal Ectognatha. In fact, Rhyniognatha has derived characters shared with winged insects, suggesting that the origin of wings may have been earlier than previously believed. Regardless, Rhyniognatha indicates that insects originated in the Silurian period and were members of some of the earliest terrestrial faunas.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02291 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:427:y:2004:i:6975:d:10.1038_nature02291

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02291

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().