Rhyniognatha Hirsti

Four hundred and eight million years or more ago, these mandibled arthropods were alive left years to languish in the fossil drawer, unearthed again, just crushed remains survive. These natives of what would be Aberdeen, by nearly thirty million years, predate the oldest bugs that anyone had seen -- New York’s silverfish must now abdicate. Their body shape seems to exemplify what we today can still identify -- ancestors of our modern dragonfly -- and that they had four wings we can imply. What does it matter? What’s it signify? Once life emerged from seas, it learned to fly.