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GEOLOGICAL

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Originally appearing in Volume V13, Page 432 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GEOLOGICAL See also:

HISTORY The See also:classification just given has been See also:drawn up with reference to existing See also:insects, but the See also:great See also:majority of the See also:extinct forms that have been discovered can be referred with some confidence, to the same orders, and in many cases to See also:recent families. The See also:Hexapoda, being aerial, terrestrial and fresh-See also:water animals, are but occasionally preserved in stratified rocks, and our know-ledge of extinct members of the class is therefore fragmentary, while the description, as insects, of various obscure fossils, which are perhaps not even Arthropods, has not tended to the See also:advancement of this See also:branch of See also:zoology. Nevertheless, much progress has been made. Several See also:Silurian fossils have been identified as insects, including a Thysanuran from See also:North See also:America. but upon these considerable doubt has been See also:cast. The Devonian rocks of See also:Canada (New See also:Brunswick) have yielded several fossils which are undoubtedly wings of Hexapods. These have been described by S. H. Scudder, and include gigantic forms related to the Ephemeroptera. In the Carboniferous strata (See also:Coal See also:measures) remains of Hexapods become numerous and quite indisputable. Many See also:European forms of this See also:age have been described by C. See also:Brongniart, and See also:American by S. H.

Scudder. The latter has established, for all the Palaeozoic insects, an See also:

order Palaeodictyoptera, there being a closer similarity between the fore-wings and the See also:hind-wings than is to be seen in most living orders of Hexapoda, while See also:affinities are shown to several of these orders—notably the See also:Orthoptera, Ephemeroptera, Odonata and See also:Hemiptera. It is probable that many of these Carboniferous insects might be referred to the Isoptera, while others would fall into the existing orders to which they are allied, with some modification of our See also:present diagnoses. Of See also:special See also:interest are cockroach-like forms, with two pairs of similar membranous wings and a See also:long ovipositor, and gigantic insects allied to the Odonata, that measured 2 ft. across the outspread .wings. A remark-able fossil from the Scottish Coal-measures (Lithomantis) had apparently small wing-like structures on the prothorax, and in allied genera small veined outgrowths—like tracheal gills—occurred on the abdominal segments. To the See also:Permian See also:period belongs a remarkable genus Eugereon, that combines hemipteroid jaws with orthopteroid wing-neuration. With the See also:dawn of the Mesozoic See also:epoch we reach Hexapods that can be. unhesitatingly referred to existing orders. Froth the Trias of See also:Colorado, Scudder has described cockroaches intermediate between their Carboniferous precursors and their present-See also:day descendants, while the existence of endopterygotous Hexapods is shown by the remains of See also:Coleoptera of several families. In the See also:Jurassic rocks are found Ephemeroptera and Odonata, as well as Hemiptera, referable to existing families, some representatives of which had already appeared in the See also:oldest of the Jurassic ages—the See also:Lias. To the Lias also can be traced back the See also:Neuroptera, the Trichoptera, the orthorrhaphous See also:Diptera and, according to the determination of certain obscure fossils, also the See also:Hymenoptera (ants). The Lithographic See also:stone of Kimmeridgian age, at Solenhofen in See also:Bavaria, is especially See also:rich in See also:insect remains, cyclorrhaphous Diptera appearing here for the first See also:time. In See also:Tertiary times the higher Diptera, besides See also:Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera, referable to existing families, become fairly abundant: Numerous fossil insects preserved in the See also:amber of the Baltic Oligocene have been described by G.

L. Mayr and others, while Scudder has studied the rich Oligocene faunas of Colorado (Florissant) and See also:

Wyoming (See also:Green See also:River). The Oeningen beds of See also:Baden, of See also:Miocene age, have also yielded an extensive insect See also:fauna, described fifty years ago by O. Heer. Further details of the geological history of the Hexapoda will be found in the special articles on the various orders. Fragmentary as the records are, they show that the Exopterygota preceded the Endopterygota in the See also:evolution of the class, and that among the Endopterygota those orders in which the greatest difference exists between imago and larva—the Lepidoptera, Diptera and Hymenoptera—were the latest to take their rise.

End of Article: GEOLOGICAL

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