Insects and their fellow creepy crawlies have been around for a long, long, looong time. Long before dinosaurs ever showed up on stage. A common misconception is that creepy crawlies in prehistoric times were limited to just dragonflies, millipedes, and perhaps spiders, and they were all giant. I’m thinking about a certain eagle-size dragonfly and six-foot long millipede in particular. But there was only one period of history that insects and their other arthropod relatives (like spiders) were truly giant- the Carboniferous period. The Permian Period- the Age of Amphibians- is the span of time between the Carboniferous and Triassic period. The Triassic Period, of course, is when the first dinosaurs came on the scene.

The reason for the giant size of creepy-crawlies during the Carboniferous, and no other period, where the high levels of oxygen from the boom in forest and tree growth around the world. By the time the Jurassic Period rolls around, oxygen levels are a bit more like they are today, and bugs are about as big as they get today. The “bugs” in this series are only a tiny fraction of the diversity there was during the Jurassic. They are delicate creatures and do not fossilize easily, so who knows how many there really were? Most of these still have surviving species today that look very similar to how they looked so many years ago, and they provide a tiny glimpse to the many strange and wonderful insects that flew in the air and crawled in the leaf litter during the Jurassic.

Continue reading →