Comments on Insecta of the Rhynie Chert

Abstract

In the paper by Kühne & Schlüter [1985] reference is made to a publication of my own [Crowson 1971] in which I reported having seen, in a palaeobotanical rock-section of Rhynie Chert in the collection of the late Prof. J. Walton, what was clearly a nymph of a species of Thysanoptera, representing the more advanced group Tubulifera. The authors cite this as evidence for the occurrence of higher Pterygota in the Lower Devonian period; otherwise, the oldest known fossils of winged insects date from the late Namurian, and they comprise only primitive types, widely unlike any taxa now living. The oldest Thysanoptera known in the fossil record are from Permian deposits in the USSR [Martinova 1962], and appear to represent very primitive types, certainly not of Tubulifera.