It’s very interesting to know whether wasps are older than the dinosaurs, as they managed to not only evolve through time but also outlive dinosaurs. And the fossils – the mineralized remains of dead organisms – state that the wasps are quite old.
The dinosaurs appeared on earth around 245 million years ago, while the oldest fossil bees and wasps are around 100 million years old. This means that the dinosaurs are older than the wasps. This also means that dinosaurs and wasps lived together for approximately 35 million years or possibly even more.
It’s important to study insects and how they evolved and especially bees and wasps, as they are insect pollinators. This means they play a significant role in the reproduction of flowering plants, some of which are key for food supply. So let’s get into more details about this.
Did wasps live with dinosaurs?
Yes, the wasps lived with dinosaurs and for a very long period of time. They lived together on earth for at least 35 million years before a mass extinction, which wiped out the dinosaurs from the earth.
How can we know about this?
With the help of fossils, scientists can study the evolution of wasps and tell how they looked like million years ago. Animal species that are extinct and only discovered through fossils look very differently from what animals look like today.
Scientists are able to see which features belong to which family. This helps to identify the brand of the tree of life these animals belong to. When it comes to insects the scientists are able to identify a wasp, for example, by its distinctive features, such as the shape of body parts, vein patterns in wings, etc.
Through these features, scientists have found dozens of species that are now extinct in fossils. Some of these species are very similar to the modern ones, while others look different, though they are still recognizable as wasps.
When and where did wasps evolve from?
The 100 million-year-old wasp fossil, which was preserved in amber and found in Myanmar is one of the closest relatives of bees. During the ancient times, an era of dinosaurs, which is also known to geologists as the Cretaceous, the continents were covered in green forests of tree ferns, cycads, huge horsetails, etc.
The wasps were predators and they remain predators to this day. It’s believed that the first wasps were related to snakeflies. The first wasp species were solitary wasp species. This means that they were not living in colonies. And to this day the majority of wasps are solitary.
The first fossil example of wasps that were in colonies was dated back to 30 million years ago. The oldest fossil bees look like wasps. Also, bees are thought to be one of the branches of the wasp family tree. This branch has evolved a lifestyle, where instead of eating other insects, they got food from different flowers.
The most preserved fossil bees have been found in amber, which is a plant sap. The amber is around 99 million years old, which dates back to dinosaurs. Amber is a semi-precious stone that comes from tree sap and oozes down.
Different insects get trapped in amber and then be turned into fossils. But how do scientists know the age of these fossils?
The answer is that these fossils were in the rocks, from which the age can be determined. Usually, it shows through the decay of uranium into lead.
The age of the rock can be determined from how much uranium and lead were there when the rock was formed, how much is present now, and how fast the decay happens. And from that, we can also tell the age of fossilized organisms.
What did the first wasps look like?
The wasps that were on earth at the same time as dinosaurs were not bigger than the wasps that we know today. People usually think that the wasps during the dinosaur era were the size of birds.
Despite a long period of time, it seems like wasps haven’t changed that much.
There is one type of wasps that was researched by scientists recently called Cuckoo wasps. And actually, Cuckoo wasps haven’t changed that much with time. 99 million years ago Cuckoo wasps were metallic green, just like they are today. It was shown in one study of well-preserved amber fossils.
There is a rare set of amber fossils that include cuckoo wasps that show that they had metallic green, yellow and purple colors on their head, chest, and legs.
It’s thought that this type of wasps, which people also call emerald wasps, evolved this metallic green color as a unique form of camouflage. Cuckoo wasps lay their eggs in unrelated insect species, but use certain chemicals to trick other insects into believing that the eggs are their own.
The scientists emphasize that the preservation of color in these species is extraordinary. They even wanted to check why in some fossils the color was preserved, while in others not. They found that the color that was preserved is called structural color, which is caused by the microscopic structure of the animal’s surface.
This shows that the fossils had been very well-preserved and the colors, which can be seen on them, remained the same since the dinosaur era. There were also fossils where color was not preserved and the external skeletons were damaged. This explains their black appearance.
Summary: Are Wasps older than dinosaurs?
So, the answer to this question is no. Wasps are not older than dinosaurs. They appeared a bit later than dinosaurs, survived the mass extinction, and evolved into species that are well-known today.
The insects that accidentally got trapped in amber millions of years ago provide important and most vivid information about the distant past. From the evidence that scientists got from fossils, we can see that wasps were on earth from around 100 million years ago, which dinosaurs from 245 million years ago.
