Dinosaurs had fleas too -- giant ones, fossils show   PhysOrg - February 29, 2012
In the Jurassic era, even the flea was a beast, compared to its minuscule modern descendants. These pesky bloodsuckers were nearly an inch long. New fossils found in China are evidence of the oldest fleas - from 125 million to 165 million years ago, said Diying Huang of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology. Their disproportionately long proboscis, or straw-like mouth, had sharp weapon-like serrated edges that helped them bite and feed from their super-sized hosts, he and other researchers reported today.

50-Legged Creature May Have Been Top Predator of Ancient Seafloor   Live Science - November 9, 2011
An ancient cockroach-like creature nearly a foot long once skittered along the seafloor in what is now Canada, a new fossil find reveals. The fossil, a series of 500-million-year-old tracks, captured the movement of a large seafloor-dwelling creature with at least 25 pairs of legs. The animal was likely an arthropod called Tegopelte, a rare giant very rarely found fossilized. Arthropods are invertebrates with exoskeletons, a group that includes today's crustaceans and insects.

Fossil moths reveal their true colors   PhysOrg - October 12, 2011
Moths dead for 47 million years are again showing their true colors. For the first time, scientists have reconstructed the colors of an ancient fossil moth. The findings detailed not just a few spots of color, but the appearance of the entire organism.

Fossil shows daddy longlegs remain unchanged   MSNBC - August 23, 2011
Daddy longlegs have been skittering around the Earth for more than 300 million years, as confirmed by the discovery and imaging of two species that lived in the forests of what is now France before the time of the dinosaurs. Detailed 3-D reconstructions of the two species reveal that they look surprisingly similar to modern daddy longlegs, which are also known as harvestmen and commonly mistaken for spiders. Each had eight long legs and a flat, circular body, spanning about 0.4 inches in length

Ancient 'Frankenstein' Insect Discovered   Live Science - July 19, 2011

Insect "Frankensteins" have been discovered among fossils from a deposit in Brazil. The prehistoric creatures had the wings and middle-body segments of a dragonfly's, wing veins arranged like a mayfly and a praying mantis's forelegs. From two adult and about 30 larval fossils that came from the Brazilian fossil deposit and are now contained in collections around the world, the researchers created a new order - a broad category that can contain many species - called Coxoplectoptera. This newly named group of insects is long gone; it has no modern descendants, and the fossils date back 120 million years to the early Cretaceous Period.

New Insects, Bacteria Uncovered in Dinosaur-Era Amber Deposit   Science Daily - April 6, 2010
First African Amber Photos: Thunder Fly, Wasps, More   National Geographic - April 6, 2010
Perfectly preserved in an amber "time capsule," a tiny chalcid wasp is among 30 new discoveries that represent the first amber fossils ever found in Africa.

Ancient 'Monster' Insect: 'Unicorn' Fly Never Before Observed   Science Daily - October 27, 2009

Oldest Example Of Mutualism: Termites And Protozoa Discovered Together In Ancient Amber   Science Daily - May 15, 2009

Japan: Ancient Praying Mantis Found in Amber National Geographic - April 26, 2008

An 87-million-year-old praying mantis found encased in amber in Japan may be a "missing link" between mantises from the Cretaceous period and modern-day insects. The fossil mantis measures 0.5 inch (1.4 centimeters) from its antennae to the tip of its abdomen.

Scientists discover first fossil of a leaf insect PhysOrg - February 9, 2007

Stick and leaf insects both belong to the insect order Phamatodea, or phasmid for short, a term which shares the same roots as the word phantom. Besides appropriately describing the species' illusory presence mimicking natural flora, the rare leaf insect was proving to be illusive to scientists in search of the history behind the leaf insects - namely, through a complete absence of fossils.

New Scientist - February 11, 2004

The world's oldest known insect has been found lurking in a fossil-filled vault under a museum. The finding pushes back the origins of winged insects by 80 million years, and could shed light on the mystery of why the ability to fly first evolved.

The fossilized creature, Rhyniognatha hirsti, is 400 million years old and comes from near Aberdeen, Scotland. The Australian entomologist Robin John Tillyard studied it in the 1920s and reported that it might be related to insects, but he could not be sure.

Since then, experts largely accepted Tillyard's suggestion that the fossil is unremarkable, and it was left undisturbed in the vaults of London's Natural History Museum.

Engel, with David Grimaldi of New York's American Museum of Natural History, saw that Rhyniognatha has all the hallmarks of a true insect. Far from being a primitive type, it chewed food with efficient scissor-like jaw mouthparts, or mandibles, with two joints.

Its mandible structure is only ever found in winged insects, which is compelling evidence that Rhyniognatha could fly, even though wings do not appear on the fossil. "The fossil came from hot springs, and unfortunately, boiling water is not a good place for a wing to be preserved," Engel notes.

Until now, the oldest insect fossils on record were a primitive pair of wingless insects 379 million years old, found in New York State and Canada. Winged insects were thought to have evolved later, some 320 million years ago. But Rhyniognatha suggests insects were flying at least 400 million years ago.

Pushing back the evolutionary origins of insects could help explain why they have become so dazzlingly diverse. "Even just the known insect species outnumber all other living things combined," says Engel.

It could also hint at why insects started to fly. Shortly before Rhyniognatha lived, the world's plants had sprouted from dwarfs no more than a metre high into giants more than 30 metres tall. It is possible that insects coped with the new environment by learning to glide from treetops to the ground. Engel now hopes to trawl the world's famous fossil sites to find more insects as old as Rhyniognatha. "We would absolutely die to have an entire bug with wings from that period, we could learn so much from their structure."