This story began with a question from a five-year-old:
“Do insects turn into dinosaurs?”
If you’re older than five, you probably know the short answer: No.
But Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service program specialist and Texas Standard’s go-to insect expert Wizzie Brown digs a little deeper.
Insects lived with dinosaurs
“If we look at kind of the different time periods throughout history, large insects lived in the Permian period. Those were our giant dragonflies that were very huge and had a one- to two-foot wingspan,” Brown said. “We had primitive grasshoppers, large scorpions the size of like a small cat and that sort of thing.”
» RELATED: Dragonflies and damselflies have been around since before dinosaurs. How to tell them apart
Brown said those large insects lived in the Permian but were wiped out with the Permian extinction event. The smaller insects, similar to the ones that we have today, survived and lived into the Mesozoic — along with the dinosaurs.
Why we don’t know a lot about prehistoric insects
Brown said it takes specific types of sediment to actually fossilize an insect because they have an exoskeleton made of chitin that is not as hard as the bone structures of animals.
“So they need a fine-grained sediment, or they need to be on a tree and get encased in sap that will then turn into amber later on for us to look at,” Brown said.
Brown said she also didn’t find very may scientists studying ancient insects. But she did find a scientist who studies dinosaur coprolites.
“Which is essentially fossilized dinosaur poop,” Brown said. “And she has found evidence of dung beetle activity in the coprolites.”
» RELATED: 6 things you didn’t know about dung beetles. (But, yes, they love poo)
What hasn’t changed
“A lot of those smaller insects, like cockroaches, they haven’t changed their body design in over 200 million years,” Brown said. “So they’ve apparently figured something out early on that’s like, ‘this is what we’re doing and we’re good at it so we’re just gonna stick with this.’”
Brown said while smaller insects lived with the dinosaurs, they’re, of course, not changing into them.
If you want modern-day dinosaurs, look to chickens.
Do you have a bug question for Wizzie Brown? Drop us a line, and we’ll pass it along.
