Scientists Find World's Oldest Fossil Gnat From 247 Million Years Ago

Scientists have discovered the oldest fossil of a tiny insect on a Mediterranean beach. It belongs to the order called dipterans, which include flies, mosquitoes, midges and gnats. The preserved fossil of the larva stunned the scientists who say it roamed the Earth 247 million years ago - before the continents began to form. The findings have been published in Papers on Paleontology and reveal the insect had a breathing system similar to those found in various insect groups existing today.

The fossil is several millions of years older than the previous record holder for a gnat, which was found in France. 

The researchers have said in the study that the fossil shares key features with Anisopodidae, a small cosmopolitan family of gnat-like flies known as wood gnats or window-gnats.

Scientists are thrilled by the discovery as they believe it could hold the key to revealing how life recovered from the Earth's biggest ever mass extinction event, about 250 million years ago.

"We have been able to look at some of the adaptations by the first dipterans to the post-apocalyptic environment at the beginning of the Triassic, for instance, a breathing system that is still found in different groups of insects today," one of the authors of the study, Dr Ricardo Perez-de la Fuente, said about the study, as per UK-based Metro.

The fossil was discovered a few years ago and has been named after Josep Juerez, the man who found it during a palaeontological survey.

This comes a month after a well-preserved vertebrate brain was found in the head of a 319 million-year-old fish that was pulled out of an English coal mine around a century ago.