Fossil Insects in Relation to Living Forms

Abstract

WHEN Handlirsch completed his great work “Die Fossilen Insekten” in 1908, it was possible to take a wide survey of the problem of fossil insects. The outstanding feature of this was the great gap in our knowledge of Permian and Triassic forms. On one side it was seen that the present type of insect fauna could be traced back with little essential modification right to the English Lias, in which all the chief existing orders of insects are known except the Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera; on the other, there layL the very different Upper Carboniferous faunas of the Age of Giant Insects. The only connecting type common to both was the cockroaches, which are thus seen rightly to merit the name of aristocrats of the insect world, and, like other aristocracies, are in this democratic age a small and disappearing unit. Between these two were known only Permian cockroaches and a few Permian and Triassic types, not enough to enable us to trace a good connexion.