I saw an article on a mantis encased in Amber that’s 30 million years old. assuming mantis reproduce once a year, this thing is like 30 million generations removed from a modern mantis. It might not even be able to reproduce with a modern mantis Even if it does look exactly the same.
I looked into humans as a comparison and even 10 million years ago, the modern human didn’t even exist. there’s a good chance we’re too separated from them to reproduce or even be considered the same species. so wouldn’t that also apply to this 30 million year old mantis.
In: Biology
Think of the term “mantis” in the same way as you think of the term “bird”: it’s not one species but thousands, whose evolution dates back many tens of millions of years. With humans of course it’s different: most people use the word “human” to describe only members of the *Homo Sapiens* species. You could also expand the definition of “human” to include any animal within the genus *Homo*; that would include many more species, with an evolutionary history dating back about 3.5 million years.
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