Fossil Insects
In comparison with other countries, fossil remains of insects are scarce; only ten species have been described and named. My information on this subject is obtained from Messrs. Etheridge and Olliff’s Memoir of the Geological Survey, (Palaeontology No. 7,); “The Mesozoic and Tertiary Insects of New South Wales,” 1890. The first record of fossil insects was made by Moore in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1870, entitled “Note on a plant and insect bed on the Rocky River, N.S.W.” “These insects were obtained from a chocolate-coloured micaceous laminated marl, forming a bed ten feet thick, at a depth of about one hundred feet from the surface, and forming a portion of the Tertiary drift worked at the above locality. The latter are probably of Pliocene age.” (E. & O.)
Jack obtained the wing of a dragon fly in the Cretaceous beds of the Flinders River, N. Queensland, which was described and figured by Woodward under the name of Aeschna flindersensis in the Geological Magazine, 1884. It was entombed in a dark chocolate limestone.
The insects described and figured by Messrs. Etheridge and Olliff consist of a cicada (C. lowei) from the “Taeniopteris-bearing beds of the Talbragar River in New South Wales, and of Lower Mesozoic age”: a fly, Chironomus venerabilis: and a mayfly, Ephemera culleni: and a beetle larva belonging to the Lampyridae, under the name of Palaeolycus problematicus, from the Tertiary beds at Emmaville, New England.
From the Ipswich Coal Measures of Queensland comes the fossil wing of a Buprestid beetle, allied to existing Stigmodera, which they called Mesostigmodera typica. Among the insect remains from this locality the authors note several wings that appear to belong to weevils and other beetles allied to existing species.
Mr. W. S. Dun informs me that insect remains have been found at Narellan N.S.W. in Wianamatta shales, and also in the brick pits at St. Peters near Sydney.