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 settle 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, a way to reach food nobody else could, and a dimension to themselves for ninety million years. They are still the most diverse animals on the planet, and the wing is why.

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. The gap is either a failure of preservation or an artefact of calibration.

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