CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Feb. 3 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say a fossil of an ancestor of modern cricket-like insects shows the category has undergone little evolutionary change in 100 million years.
Scientists at the University of Illinois say the find in a limestone fossil bed in northeastern Brazil differs little from a modern group of large carnivorous insects living today in Asia, Indochina and Africa, showing the genus has been in evolutionary "stasis" since the time of the dinosaurs in the Early Cretaceous Period, a university release reported Thursday.
"Schizodactylidae, or splay-footed crickets, are an unusual group of large, fearsome-looking predatory insects related to the true crickets, katydids and grasshoppers, in the order Orthoptera," University of Illinois entomologist Sam Heads said.
"They get their common name from the large, paddle-like projections on their feet, which help support their large bodies as they move around their sandy habitats, hunting down prey," he said.
The region where the fossil was found was most likely an arid or semi-arid monsoonal environment during the Early Cretaceous Period, Heads said, "suggesting that the habitat preferences of Schizodactylus have changed little in over 100 million years."
