Page 259 - The Origin of Birds and Flight

nsects are part of the Insecta sub-phylum within the
arthropod (jointedlegged) phylum. Insects are one of
the four living groups on Earth with the ability to fly,
the others being birds, flying reptiles and bats.
The origin of flight in insects, as with the other
groups, also constitutes a huge dilemma for the theory of evolu-
tion.
But so is the origin of insects in general an insoluble puzzle
for evolutionists!
The oldest insect fossils date back to the Devonian Period
(417 to-354 million years ago). Insects in the strata from this peri-
od appear suddenly, with flawless structures, and no living or-
ganisms can be proposed as their ancestors. As the well-known
French paleontologist Pierre Paul Grassé says, “We are in the dark
concerning the origin of insects.” 226
For example, cockroaches appear suddenly and with their
present-day structures in the Earth’s strata. Betty Faber, of the
American Museum of Natural History, states that fossilized roach-
es from 350 million years ago are exactly the same as those of to-
day. 227 Anthropods such as spiders, acarid and centipedes are not
true insects, although they are usually referred to as such. Very
significant fossils of these creatures were presented at the annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science in 1983. The most striking feature of these 380-million-year
old fossils was their being identical to present-day specimens. One
of the scientists who examined them commented, “they looked
like they might have died yesterday.” 228
The oldest known flying insects are dragonflies, which ap-
pear in the Pennsylvanian Period (325 to 286 million years ago).
Just like the other species in the fossil record, they appear sud-
denly, and with no ancestors. For instance, a 320-million-year-old