A discovery Michael Engel never expected to find is now making an impact around the world.

Engel, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and assistant curator of Kansas University’s Natural History Museum, and a colleague found what is believed to be the oldest insect on record in July 2002. News of the find was announced in February.

“The discovery has crept into entomology classes around the world. I have heard to this effect from colleagues at numerous institutions through the U.S. as well as other countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Russia, etc. — and it is even creeping into textbooks,” Engel said.

After scouring the Earth in search of old insects, Engel’s find — a 407-million-year-old bug that looked like a tiny mayfly or dragonfly — came in an unexpected location. He and David Grimaldi, curator of entomology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, discovered the insect in a drawer at the Museum of Natural History in London.

“After years and years of field work, here it was at a museum,” Engel said. “It’s an amazing thing.”

The scientists were examining fossilized insects for a book on insect evolution, which will be published in late December, when they came across a fossil encased in translucent rock in a drawer.

Engel and Grimaldi analyzed the rock and found a pair of triangular jaws that are similar to those only found in winged insects. They were able to date the insect back to 407 million years ago.

“I remember the look on Michael’s face and mine when we looked at it,” Grimaldi said. “He said, ‘Are you seeing what I see? This is incredible.'”

The insect — called Rhyniognatha, or “Jaws from Rhynie” — was about a quarter of an inch long. It may have sailed between the knee-high tropical plants of its time, possibly feeding on spores.

Previously, the oldest insects on record were 379-million-year-old fragments found 20 years ago in upstate New York. DNA evidence suggests insects originated about 434 million years ago, though no fossil that old has been discovered.

Kansas University professor Michael Engel found what is believed to be the world's oldest insect in a drawer at a London museum. Above, Engel displays a tarantula hawk wasp from Guatemala in his Snow Hall office.

Though the specimen didn’t have wings, Engel said its other traits, including its large mandibles, point to the fact that the insect did have wings that weren’t preserved. The oldest winged animal on record before this find was about 320 million years old.

“We had no idea that insects might have developed wings so early on in their evolutionary history,” said Bill Shear, professor of biology at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. “Either insects have been around for a lot longer prior to this time or wings and flight developed very rapidly after the origin of insects.”

Engel said the new insect should provide new insight into the evolution of life on earth. He noted that insects have lived through periods that caused mass extinctions among other species.

“Insects are the most diverse group of animals today,” he said. “We talk about the age of dinosaurs or the age of mammals, but those have all occurred during the overarching age of insects. They control every aspect of human life. They’re beneficial for agriculture and the greatest evil for agriculture. They’re completely and wholly integrated into the welfare of human existence.”

Engel said the buzz the discovery created in the entomology world last winter has since died down. But he’s continuing to search for specimens that will shed additional light on early insects and recently discovered the earliest evidence of beetles in North America — 268-million-year-old beetles from northern Oklahoma. That paper will be published by the Annals of the Entomological Society of America in December or January.

“The fossil hunt continues,” he said.