Rhyniognatha hirsti

Fossil evidence indicates that flight evolved as soon as life left the seas.

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.