30 Oct. 2015, BY: News Nation Bureau

Beijing : In an interesting discovery, a 120 million-year-old fossil that belonged to an ancestor of the modern long-horned grasshopper has been found by a Chinese student in Yumen in Gansu province.

The preserved fossil is preserved and is claimed to be a 3-cm section of the ancient insect’s wing.

According to the student Wang He, “Most insects only have their wings preserved in the fossils. Their bodies, unlike the wings, were easily decomposed or eaten by other creature. Judging from the wing, the strata where the fossil was found and the nearby associated fossils, we can be sure that the insect was the ancestor of the modern katydid.”

The boy Wang is doing his post-graduate work at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Notably, the modern Katydid has weaker wings and reproductive organs than its ancestors. Their is also a supported theory that ancient insect could sing like the modern ones.

Another professor Zhang Haichun has added claims that fossils of the orthopteran familyProphalangopsidae have only been found China.

Notably, this is the first such find in the province which is otherwise dry thus proving that the region was once humid and full of water systems.

We all know that insects require humid environments to balance life form. Another theory which was given was that the insects lived in the Cretaceous Period.

It is the same period when the world’s earliest flowers began to appear, and their leaves were eaten by insects.

What are Katydids?

Insects in the cricket family Tettigoniidae are commonly called katydids or bush crickets. There are more than 6,400 species. They are also known as long-horned grasshoppers, to distinguish them from the Caelifera, the true or short-horned grasshoppers.

From: http://www.newsnation.in/article/95173-chinese-student-discovers-120-million-year-old-fossil-modern-long-horned-grassho.html