Monday, May 01, 2017

A Half-Meter Long Dragonfly

Would have loved to see that thing!:
From these two finds, and calculations of other griffinflies, it was estimated that Meganeuropsis had a body roughly 47 centimeters long, with a wingspan of 75 centimeters across. This is much wider than the South American damselfly Megaloprepus, the largest odonatan living today. Meganeuropsis was able to get this large possibly due to a far higher oxygen content in the atmosphere. During the Carboniferous, there was a massive influx in global oxygen levels and this allowed many land-living invertebrates to get to huge sizes.

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