Why Giant Prehistoric Insects Ruled Earth Before the Dinosaurs. Think: eight-foot-long millipedes and dragonflies with two-foot wingspans. By Tim Newcomb Published: Jul 06, 2022 9:42 AM EDT.

This was a period when giant insects reigned. M. permiana is one of many examples of Permian insects that outweigh their contemporaries. Other invertebrates reached giant proportions in the past ...

Millions of years ago, oversized insects like griffinflies boasting wingspans comparable to today's hawks scuttled across (and fluttered above) the planet. But why these jumbo jets of the insect ...

Among the most iconic of these ancient insects was Meganeura, a giant dragonfly-like insect. Fossils of Meganeura have been discovered in locations such as France and the United Kingdom, revealing ...

Giant insects ruled the prehistoric skies during periods when Earth’s atmosphere was rich in oxygen. Then came the birds. After the evolution of birds about 150 million years ago, insects got smaller ...

Prehistory's biggest insects were likely easy prey to dinosaur-era birds, a new study says. A Meganeura with a 30-inch (76-centimeter) wingspan, circa 300 million years ago (artist's conception).

Giant insects that ruled prehistoric skies for millions of years may have met their end due to the evolution of predatory birds, researchers say. Gigantic insects once dominated the Earth. About ...

Fossils show that giant dragonflies and huge cockroaches were common during the Carboniferous period, which lasted from about 359 to 299 million years ago. (Explore a prehistoric time line .) ...

It’s hard to believe that a prehistoric sea creature the size of Shaquille O’Neal could teach us anything about a modern dust mite. But a 7-foot-long, 480-million-year-old marine animal called ...

While we won’t see giant dragonflies swooping down on us today, the fossil evidence of these enormous insects reminds us of a time when Earth was very different.

One hypothesis for how the insects of the Permian grew so large is that atmospheric oxygen levels were higher than they are today (they were as high as 30% in the Permian, compared to today's 21%).