Earliest springtail

The earliest recognized species of springtail is Rhyniella praecursor, which is known from scattered fossil remains dating back approximately 410 million years to the Pragian stage of the early Devonian Period. It is known from the Rhynie chert – sedimentary rock deposits exposed near the village of Rhynie in Aberdeenshire, Scotland – where its remains were first discovered in 1919, and it was formally described and named in 1926.

Springtails or collembolans were traditionally classed as insects. However, various notable anatomical differences, such as the internal mouthparts of springtails (insects have external mouthparts), as well as DNA differences, have led most modern-day entomologists to rehouse springtails within an entirely separate taxonomic class of arthropods that they share with two other groups also formerly deemed to be insects – the proturans and the diplurans, both of which have internal mouthparts too.