3億年前,，一只小飛蟲在地球上的一塊泥地上滑行著降落,，并永恒保存了這一3.5厘米長的印記（如圖）。

根據腿部姿態(tài),、腹部曲線,，以及翅膀標記的缺乏，研究人員推測,，這個印記是由一只在休息時豎起了雙翼的古老蜉蝣留下的,。

研究人員在4月4日出版的美國《國家科學院院刊》（PNAS）上報告說，這一采自美國馬薩諸塞州東南部的化石是已知最古老的飛蟲完整印記,。

今天的昆蟲掠過水面的本領被認為是一個現(xiàn)代發(fā)明,。然而微小拖曳痕跡的發(fā)現(xiàn)意味著，蜉蝣在停止之前可能的滑行足以提醒某些古生物學家在這件事情上不抱成見,。（生物谷Bioon.com）

生物谷推薦原文出處：

PNAS  doi: 10.1073/pnas.1015948108

Late Carboniferous paleoichnology reveals the oldest full-body impression of a flying insect

Richard J. Knechta,1, Michael S. Engelb,c, and Jacob S. Bennera

Insects were the first animals to evolve powered flight and did so perhaps 90 million years before the first flight among vertebrates. However, the earliest fossil record of flying insect lineages (Pterygota) is poor, with scant indirect evidence from the Devonian and a nearly complete dearth of material from the Early Carboniferous. By the Late Carboniferous a diversity of flying lineages is known, mostly from isolated wings but without true insights into the paleoethology of these taxa. Here, we report evidence of a full-body impression of a flying insect from the Late Carboniferous Wamsutta Formation of Massachusetts, representing the oldest trace fossil of Pterygota. Through ethological and morphological analysis, the trace fossil provides evidence that its maker was a flying insect and probably was representative of a stem-group lineage of mayflies. The nature of this current full-body impression somewhat blurs distinctions between the systematics of traces and trace makers, thus adding to the debate surrounding ichnotaxonomy for traces with well-associated trace makers.