A Giant ‘Dragonfly’ Fossil of Meganeuridae Was the Largest Insect Ever Existed
Meganeura, the largest flying insect ever known to exist, had a wing span of up to 65 cm and lived during the Carboniferous period.
Meganeuropsis was the first to rule the skies, long before pterosaurs, birds, and bats.
The largest known insect was a predator that looked like a dragonfly but was only distantly related to them. Meganeuropsis was the first to rule the skies, long before pterosaurs, birds, and bats.
The majority of popular textbooks mention “giant dragonflies” who lived before the dinosaurs. This is only partially true, because real dragonflies had not yet evolved. They were more primitive ‘griffin flies,’ or Meganisopterans, than true dragonflies. Their fossil record is rather limited.
They existed between 317 and 247 million years ago, from the Late Carboniferous to the Late Permian.
Meganeuropsis, a dragonfly-like insect, flew the skies from the Late Carboniferous to the Late Permian periods, 317 to 247 million years ago. It had a wingspan of about 28 inches and a body length of about 17 inches.”
Meganeura fossils were discovered for the first time in France in 1880. The fossil was then described and named by Charles Brongniart, a French Paleontologist, in 1885. Later that year, in 1979, another fine fossil specimen was discovered in Derbyshire at Bolsover.
Meganisoptera is an extinct family of predatory insects that look like today’s odonatans, dragonflies, and damselflies. Meganeuropsis was the largest of these.
It is known from two species, the largest of which is M.permiana. Meganeuropsis permiana is, as the name implies, from the Early Permian.
There has been some debate about how Carboniferous period insects were able to grow so large.
•The amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and its density.
The way oxygen is distributed through the insect’s body via its tracheal breathing system places a limit on body size that prehistoric insects appear to have well exceeded. It was originally proposed that Meganeura could only fly because the atmosphere contained more oxygen than the current 20%.
•A scarcity of predators.
Other explanations for meganeurids’ large size in comparison to living relatives are warranted. Bechly proposed that the absence of aerial vertebrate predators allowed pterygote insects to evolve to their maximum sizes during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, which may have been accelerated by an evolutionary “arms race” for increased body size between plant-feeding Palaeodictyoptera and Meganisoptera as their predators.
•Aquatic larvae arena.
Another theory proposes that insects that developed in water before becoming terrestrial adults grew larger to protect themselves from high oxygen levels. 317 to 247 million years ago, from the Late Carboniferous to the Late Permian.
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