Oldest Fossilised Winged Insect Yet Discovered

tr0llb4rt0 writes "The Scientific American reports on an article in Nature (paid subscription required for full text) on how the fossilised mouth parts of an insect discovered in Scotland in 1928 has turned out to be the oldest winged insect yet discovered, pushing back the age of the earliest appearance of winged insects nearly 80 million years. Previos fossils of winged insects have dated to around 330 million years and scientist believe this new discovery lived between 408 and 438 million years ago. "

Comments

Oldest bug found.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it was infesting someone's Windows 3.11 system.

Re:Oldest bug found.

[man_ls]

I thought it got jammed in a relay :(

Re:Oldest bug found.

[Anonymous Coward]

I run Windows 3.11 you insensitive clod!

[Troll]Help Me Nerds!

[Captain Goatse]

Hi i want to allocate memory for an array of pointer to a class, with an int i would do :

int *i = new int[iMyValue];
i[0] = 10;
i[1] = 5;

etc etc

However this technique does not seem to work with my classes :

class MyClass;

MyClass *hello = new MyClass[iMyValue];

hello[0] = new MyClass;
hello[1] = new MyClass;

etc etc

So I want a dynamic array of pointer to MyClass. Whats the best way to do this?

Cheers

Re:[Troll]Help Me Nerds!

[schapman]

just make an STL list or vector; include stl library dynListOfPointers = new list(); dynListOfPointers.add(new MyClass()); done. :P

Re:[Troll]Help Me Nerds!

[stuffduff]

I suggest that you try Google Groups. Every question asked on usenet...and all the answers they got.

Good Luck!

I fail to see how this is news

[ArmorFiend]

Hm, only 8 comments - maybe nobody's interested because its a boring dead bug.

I found a small pile of tan dust with two fly wings on top in my mini-tower the other day, but *I* didn't submit it.

Re:I fail to see how this is news

[SpaceLifeForm]

Well, of course not. Then your mum would know that you don't clean often enough.

Finally proof..

[Metex]

that when I was young our stone tablet punchcards had bugs and man were they huge

Mouth = wings?

[Anonymous Coward]

...fossilised mouth parts of an insect discovered in Scotland in 1928 has turned out to be the oldest winged insect yet.

It had wings on its mouth, did it? How can you really tell without, say, a piece of fossilized body? Did someone just say, "hey, this looks close enough to that big blue bug we stepped on yesterday"?

Re:Mouth = wings?

[Scrameustache]

It had wings on its mouth, did it? How can you really tell without, say, a piece of fossilized body?

You allways need a whole body to identify a creature huh AC? You can't tell a rhino from a cow just by looking at its head?

Well guess what, biologist who specialise in fossilised insects can recognise them on based on their distinctive mouth parts.

Re:Mouth = wings?

[Anonymous Coward]

You allways [sic] need a whole body to identify a creature huh AC?

No, but you need to read the article carefully before you speak, lest you wedge your foot in your mouth. Here's the important bit, since you obviously didn't read the article:

"Rhyniognatha could have had wings, say the authors, but this is impossible to confirm since the wings themselves are missing."

Care to try again?

Re:Mouth = wings?

[nobody69]

When discussing organisms at the genus level and up, you usually find that looks of seemingly unrelated characteristics are found together. Iirc from my zoology classes a decade-plus ago, mouthparts are pretty variable in insects, so it's not that unlikely that going an insect could be identified as a flyer from just the mouth parts.

Of course, since all fossils are fakes, this discussion is probably moot:)

how old?

[Anonymous Coward]

"lived between 408 and 438 million years ago"... so it was 30 million years old? no wonder it went to live in Scotland!

Re:how old?

[cujo_1111]

Shouldn't it have moved to Florida?

Protowings?

[ktanmay]

The article is pretty sketchy on details, so here's something that will help a little. Now here's the most important part from that article, "Rhyniognatha could have had wings, say the authors, but this is impossible to confirm since the wings themselves are missing."

Re:Protowings?

[Glenda Slagg]

So something 420 million years ago liked to pull the wings off flies???

Ah - the more things change, the more they stay the same...

Re:Protowings?

[El]

Uh, perhaps protowings do not fossilize very well? Are there samples of amber going back 400 million years that we should be looking in?

BBloopers

[timothv]

Featured in today's BBlooper

Jaws and wings

[axolotl_farmer]

How can they tell that these mandibles are from a winged insect when there are no wings fossilized?

Winged insects and silverfish (the closest realtice of the winged insects) share several advanced traits. One is how the mandible attaches to the head capsule. This type of mandible attaches by two point and is called 'dicondylic'.

The fossil mandibles are clearly dicondylic, and are also of a type not known from silverfish at all. They are of a broad chewing type more associated with 'higher' insects such as grasshoppers or cockroaches. Since there are no wings, they can't be abolutely sure if this was a winged insect or an unknown wingless insect more closely related to winged insects that to silverfish.

Re:Jaws and wings

[olclops]

Maybe they found the fossil buried in the sky.

Cmdr Taco fondled my junk liberally

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello ghey niggaz!

He kept ignoring the referee

[gnaasympathizer]

In the back seat

this conversation...

[Anonymous Coward]

[shivers]

Silverfish...mandibles attaching to head capsule...chewing type...not known from silverfish...

[shivers some more]