Botswana: Fossil Beetles Found in a Botswana Diamond Mine Help Us to Reconstruct the Distant Past

When most people think of fossils they probably picture bones. But there’s much more to the global fossil record: plants, shells, minerals and insects. The study of fossil insects is called palaeoentomology. Palaeoentomologists like myself seek out and study fossil insects that were trapped in mud which later became rock sediments, and those found in amber (tree resin).

Very few deposits containing either fossil plants or fossil insects, or both, have been found so far on the African continent, or…