The Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences told about the find
Scientists have discovered an imprint of a dipteran insect more than 240 million years old in ancient deposits of Germany. They suggest that this is what the wings of the ancestors of modern mosquitoes looked like.
The imprint was found in a Triassic sediment (Triassic sediment – the first geologic period of the Mesozoic and pre-Jurassic) near the village of Lengfurt in Lower Franconia.
Aleksey Bashkuev, a paleoentomologist from the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, discerned an insect wing print only 3.5 mm long on the sediment. The presence of conducting bundles in it – veins indicates that the find belongs to Diptera.
The specimen was assigned to a new species and genus Bashkonia franconica, which scientists named after the author of the find. This species was the first Triassic Diptera found in Germany, and it seems to be the most ancient.
Help “MK”. Diptera (Diptera) is one of the largest and most successful orders of insects. It includes a variety of flies and mosquitoes, which together comprise about 160,000 species.
Until recently, the most ancient Diptera were insects from the Triassic deposits of France. They were found on the surface of the Vosges mountain range. The layers of Lower Franconia in Germany, where Bashkonia franconica was found, turned out to be about one million years older than the deposits of the Vosges.
Bashkonia franconica is part of the extinct family Nadipteridae, which is close to the living diptera families Ptychopteridae and Tanyderidae, which look like long-legged mosquitoes. Many of these mosquitoes now feed on nectar and honeydew (the sweet liquid secreted by other insects). It is possible that Bashkonia franconica led a similar lifestyle, but it’s impossible to say for sure, scientists say.
They hope to answer the question of what kind of life the most ancient mosquito led, what it ate, after new specimens with a preserved body and mouthparts are found.
At present, the imprint of the found wing of the Bashkonia franconica is kept in the paleontological museum of the German city of Eyerdorf.
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