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The butterflies form the clade Rhopalocera, which is composed of three superfamilies: Hedyloidea (the moth butterfly family Hedylidae), the Hesperioidea (the skipper family Hesperiidae), and the Papilionoidea (the true butterfly families Papilionidae, Pieridae, Nymphalidae, Lycaenidae, and Riodinidae). All of these families are monophyletic.
Butterflies evolved from moths, so while the butterflies are monophyletic (forming a single clade), the moths are not. The oldest known butterfly is Protocoeliades kristenseni from the Palaeocene aged Fur Formation of Denmark, approximately 55 million years old, which belongs to the family Hesperiidae (skippers). [ 9 ]
In the so-called "macrolepidoptera", which constitutes about 60% of lepidopteran species, there was a general increase in size, better flying ability (via changes in wing shape and linkage of the forewings and hindwings), reduction in the adult mandibles, and a change in the arrangement of the crochets (hooks) on the larval prolegs, perhaps to ...
Gastornis, a large flightless bird, appears in the fossil record. 55 Ma Modern bird groups diversify (first song birds, parrots, loons, swifts, woodpeckers), first whale (Himalayacetus), earliest lagomorphs, armadillos, appearance of sirenian, proboscidean mammals in the fossil record. Flowering plants continue to diversify.
The evolution of birds began in the Jurassic Period, with the earliest birds derived from a clade of theropod dinosaurs named Paraves. [1] Birds are categorized as a biological class, Aves. For more than a century, the small theropod dinosaur Archaeopteryx lithographica from the Late Jurassic period was considered to have been the earliest bird.
The common denominator among most deposits of fossil insects and terrestrial plants is the lake environment. Those insects that became preserved were either living in the fossil lake (autochthonous) or carried into it from surrounding habitats by winds, stream currents, or their own flight (allochthonous).
A turning point came in the early twentieth century with the writings of Gerhard Heilmann of Denmark.An artist by trade, Heilmann had a scholarly interest in birds and from 1913 to 1916, expanding on earlier work by Othenio Abel, [12] published the results of his research in several parts, dealing with the anatomy, embryology, behavior, paleontology, and evolution of birds. [13]
Lepidoptera (/ ˌ l ɛ p ɪ ˈ d ɒ p t ər ə / LEP-ih-DOP-tər-ə) or lepidopterans is an order of winged insects which includes butterflies and moths.About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 10% of the total described species of living organisms, [1] [2] making it the second largest insect order (behind Coleoptera) with 126 families [3] and 46 superfamilies ...