Fossil history
Fossils in a cave system.
- Insects have been around for at least 380 million years, before even the dinosaurs!
- We know about these ancient insects from fossils.
- Some of these extinct forms were very large indeed:
- a group of insects called palaeodictyopterans, which looked like giant cockroaches and lived about 250 million years ago, had wingspans up to 56 cm!
- even larger were the giant dragonflies that lived at the same time; these had wingspans up to 71 cm!
