A McGill University undergraduate student’s discovery of a dragonfly wing has led to a 30-million-year gap in the evolutionary history of dragonflies.

The fossil was discovered in 2023, in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park. Researchers have since been able to confirm it as a new species, and it is the first known dragonfly fossil from Canada’s dinosaur-aged rocks.

“We were excavating an area where many leaf fossils had been found by cracking rocks,” said André Mueller, lead author of the study and a Master’s student in Larsson’s Lab in McGill’s Department of Biology. “When the partial wing was uncovered, we were taken by surprise as we were not expecting to find any insects there.”

“This is the first ever dinosaur-aged dragonfly found in Canada. Its wingspan was about the width of a hu

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