First winged insects took first flight during dinosaur era

A new study has revealed that winged insects like, dragonflies, damselflies took the skies during the time of dinosaurs.

According to the study, the first creatures to take to the skies of earth did so 406 million years ago and the insects originated at the same time as the earliest terrestrial plants about 480 million years ago, suggesting that insects and plants shaped the earliest terrestrial ecosystems together.

The study also found that insects developed wings long before any other animal could do so, and at nearly the same time that land plants first grew substantially upwards to form forests.

Dr. Karl Kjer, professor, Department of Ecology Evolution and Natural Resources, New Brunswick, one of the three co-directors of the team, said that many previously intractable questions are now resolved, while many of the "revolutions" brought about by previous analyses of smaller molecular datasets have contained errors that are now being corrected.

The study was published in the journal Science.