29 Oct. 2015, Dispatch Tribunal

A Chinese student has discovered 120-million-year old fossil of modern long-horned grasshopper’s ancestor in Yumen in Gansu province, China.

The 3-cm section of the insect’s wing was found by Wang He who is doing his post-graduate work at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. According to Wang, the structure of the wing indicates the ancient insect could sing like the modern ones, though the modern katydid has weaker wings and reproductive organs than its ancestor.

One of the main reasons why only wing sections are fossilized and later discovered is that unlike wings, body parts of insects decompose quickly or are eating by other creatures.

Wang explains that analysis of the wing and the strata from where the fossil was found and the nearby associated fossils indicates that the insect was the ancestor of the modern katydid.

According to Zhang Haichun, a paleontology professor at the institute, fossils of the orthopteran family Prophalangopsidae have only been found in other parts of China and other regions of the world.

The find is important because such insects have not been found in Gansu province before and the finding indicates that this province would have been a humid place full of water systems, because the insects need to grow in a humid environment.

He said the insects lived in the Cretaceous Period, when the world’s earliest flowers began to appear, and they ate flowers and plant leaves.

The fossil is kept at the institute, which has proper preservation facilities.

From: http://www.dispatchtribunal.com/120-million-year-old-fossil-of-modern-long-horned-grasshoppers-ancestor-found/6841/