Picture by Zeke

      Did you know that there are many more kinds of insects on earth than any other kind of living creature? It's hard to imagine, but of all the animal species on the earth, most of them are insects! Millions of insects can exist in a single piece of land! Scientists have discovered over one million species, and they think that there might be ten times that many that haven't been named, yet!

      They are divided up into 32 orders, or groups of insects. The largest order is the beetles with 125 different families and around 500,000 different species.

      Just like the other types of fossils, insects have to die to become fossils.  The hard parts of their bodies are preserved by the minerals in the silt, sand, mud, or volcanic ash where they died.   Through the fossils scientists have found, they have learned that insects have been around for at least 450 million years!  The oldest insect fossils that scientists have found, so far, are tiny insects without wings.  The oldest insect fossils that have wings are guess what?  Cockroaches.  Cockroaches have changed very little in all 320 million years they have been around.

 Picture By Austin