I've always been fascinated by dragonflies. I suppose every kid is to some extent. I think the word "dragon" is part of of the fascination for kids.
A milestone has been achieved for mapping the history of insects in the world, specifically in Princeton, as two new fossils of the dragonfly order of insects have been discovered that are around 50 million years old.
Descriptions and names of the fossils were recently published in the scientific journal The Canadian Entomologist by paleontologist Bruce Archibald of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum of the University of British Columbia and Robert Cannings, an emeritus entomologist with the Royal British Columbia Museum.
Archibald said that there's a beautiful record of fossil insects in British Columbia of the age that he is looking at, which is about 50-51 million years ago.
“What I'm interested in is not that long after the extinction of the dinosaurs. So what's happening is, that the world is starting to become modern,” he said.
“It's no longer this really weird Mesozoic time of dinosaurs and weird plants and also things like that. Now we're in an age where we're beginning to see the modern world emerge. And insects are really useful for that, I see a lot of modern types.”
One of the fossils is a dragonfly in the Darner family, which is very common today, according to Archibald.
“That wouldn't look at all out of place by a pond or outside the backyard,” he said. “The other one is a relative of dragonflies, which is an extinct group, which entomologists would say ‘Well this is really weird, this is different.’”
