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Butterfly evolution is the origin and diversification of butterflies through geologic time and over a large portion of the Earth's surface. The earliest known butterfly fossils are from the mid Eocene epoch, between 40-50 million years ago.
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 ]
The Rhopalocera, comprising the Papilionoidea (butterflies), Hesperioidea (skippers), and the Hedyloidea (moth-butterflies), are the most recently evolved. [9] There is quite a good fossil record for this group, with the oldest skipper dating from 56 million years ago .
Since first appearing during the age of dinosaurs, snakes have authored an evolutionary success story - slithering into almost every habitat on Earth, from oceans to tree tops. Scientists ...
Evolution of Homo antecessor. The last members of Paranthropus die out. 1 Ma First coyotes. 810 ka First wolves: 600 ka Evolution of Homo heidelbergensis. 400 ka First polar bears. 350 ka Evolution of Neanderthals. 300 ka Gigantopithecus, a giant relative of the orangutan from Asia dies out. 250 ka Anatomically modern humans appear in Africa.
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).
Anoles on a given island evolve into multiple body types and ecological preferences, and the same set of body types appears in unrelated species across distant islands. [93] The Asian sea snake Hydrophis schistosus (beaked sea snake) looks just like the Australian sea snake Hydrophis zweifeli, but in fact is not related. [94]
A study of four mammalian genera: Hyopsodus, Pelycodus, Haplomylus (three from the Eocene), and Plesiadapis (from the Paleocene) found that—through a large number of stratigraphic layers and specimen sampling—each group exhibited, "gradual phyletic evolution, overall size increase, iterative evolution of small species, and character ...