LIFE × EVOLUTION

Insects Take to the Air

~325 million years ago (molecular estimates up to 406 Ma)

Phanerozoic · Paleozoic · Carboniferous

Insects were the first animals to fly under their own power, perhaps ninety million years before any vertebrate. Where the wings came from was argued for a century, and Carboniferous nymphs have gone a long way towards settling it: their wing pads are hinged to the side of the body like a leg and joined broadly to the back like a fold of the shell, so a wing is both at once. By 312 million years ago the flying lineages were already varied, and one of them left a full-body print in the mud where it landed.

Why it matters

Flight gave insects escape, food that nothing else could reach, and for some ninety million years a dimension no other animal could enter. They are still the most diverse animals on the planet, and their wings are a large part of the reason.

Dating & uncertaintyDisputed

Fossils and molecular clocks disagree. The oldest winged-insect fossils and traces are Carboniferous, roughly 325 to 312 Ma, while phylogenomic estimates place the origin of wings near 406 Ma. A review of the record finds no support for the preservation and sampling biases that a gap that long would require, and reads the early date instead as an artefact of taxon sampling and of the fossils chosen to calibrate the clock.

Sources

1. Misof et al. (2014), Science · Phylogenomics resolves the timing and pattern of insect evolution
2. Knecht et al. (2011), PNAS · Late Carboniferous paleoichnology reveals the oldest full-body impression of a flying insect
3. Prokop et al. (2017), Current Biology · Paleozoic nymphal wing pads support dual model of insect wing origins
4. Schachat et al. (2022), Biological Journal of the Linnean Society · Illusion of flight? Absence, evidence and the age of winged insects

Earth history as one day

22:16:541 h 43 min before midnight

if Earth’s 4.54 billion years were compressed into a single day