Leaf-mimicking orthopteran fossils of Prophalangopsidae from the Daohugou biota.
Image by NIGPAS.
When we think of leaf mimicry, we usually picture modern insects like stick insects or katydids blending seamlessly into their surroundings. But new fossil discoveries show that this evolutionary trick is far older than we might imagine. In fact, insects were already disguising themselves as leaves 165 million years ago, during the Jurassic, long before flowering plants even appeared.
Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have uncovered an astonishing fossil example of close mimicry between three species of orthopteran insects—a group that includes grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids — and the leaves of an extinct cycad-like seed-bearing plant, almost certainly the very plant on which they lived. These fossils come from the 165-million-year-old Daohugou Biota of Inner Mongolia, northeastern China.
Instances of defensive mimicry or camouflage are exactly what one would expect from evolution by natural selection. In fact, it would be more surprising if potential prey species hadn’t evolved some form of defence. To an intelligent design advocate, however, such examples are awkward to explain—unless one imagines a forgetful designer who repeatedly undermines his own work. Why design predators that rely on a given prey species for food, and then deliberately design prey that are difficult for those predators to find? An arms race against oneself is hardly the hallmark of an intelligent mind.
And yet, arms races are precisely what we observe throughout the natural world — whether in competition for resources, the struggle for the fittest mate, parasite–host dynamics, or, as in this case, the evolutionary contest between predator and prey.
Examples of Leaf and Plant Mimicry. Modern InsectsThe researchers have just published their findings in Geology and discussed them further in a Chinese Academy of Sciences news release.
- Katydids (Tettigoniidae) - Many species have wings shaped and veined exactly like leaves, complete with “bite marks” and fungal spots.
- Leaf insects (Phylliidae) - Masters of mimicry, their flattened bodies and legs resemble green leaves so closely that they sway in the breeze like foliage.
- Dead leaf butterflies (Kallima spp.) - When wings are closed, they mimic a dried, decaying leaf, down to midribs and irregular edges.
- Stick insects (Phasmatodea) - Some have evolved lobed legs and flattened bodies to look like leaves, in addition to twig mimicry.
- Mantises (e.g. Choeradodis) - “Shield mantises” have enlarged, leaf-like thoraxes that allow them to blend with vegetation.
Other Organisms
- Orchids (Ophrys spp.) - Flowers mimic female insects to attract pollinators.
- Living stones (Lithops) - Succulent plants in Africa that look like pebbles, hiding from herbivores.
- Lichens on insects - Some moths and stick insects appear mottled like lichens on bark, providing camouflage.
Fossil Examples
- Jurassic Orthopterans (Daohugou Biota, ~165 Ma) - The newly described species mimicked cycad-like leaves.
- Cretaceous leaf-mimicking insects - Fossil katydids and crickets show early adaptations for wing venation resembling plant leaves.
Scientists Discover 165-Ma Jurassic Orthopterans with Leaf Mimicry, First for Co-preserved Insect-Plant Fossils
A research team led by Prof. HUANG Diying from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) has identified three species of Jurassic orthopterans—an insect group that includes grasshoppers, crickets and katydids—with forewing patterns nearly identical to the leaves of bennettitales, an extinct, cycad-like seed plant.
The fossils, belonging to the Prophalangopsidae family's Aboilinae subfamily, were unearthed from the Daohugou Biota in Inner Mongolia, northeastern China, a site dating to approximately 165 million years ago. Published recently in the journal Geology, the study marks the first definitive evidence of co-preserved mimicking insects and their plant models in the same geological bedding plane.
Under predation pressure, animals evolve diverse defensive traits, and mimicry ranks among the most effective strategies for insects. Leaf mimicry is widespread across insect orders such as Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Orthoptera, Neuroptera (lacewings), Phasmatodea (stick insects) and Mantodea (praying mantises). However, fossil evidence of this adaptation has long been scarce and often inconclusive—until now.
The team analyzed the Daohugou fossils and identified two distinct mimicry patterns:Bennettitales were a dominant component of Mesozoic floras before flowering plants (angiosperms) rose to prominence. Anomozamites leaves, in particular, were widespread across Laurasia—a ancient supercontinent encompassing modern-day Asia, Europe and North America—from the Late Triassic to the Early Cretaceous, and they formed a key part of the Daohugou flora.
- In Aboilus stratosus, the forewings feature six–seven transverse rectangular bands, bisected by a longitudinal stripe running from base to tip. This pattern closely resembles the distal (outer) portion of fronds from Anomozamites, a genus of bennettitales.
- In Sigmaboilus sp., a nearly longitudinal, inclined stripe crosses the forewing, connecting six transverse rectangular bands. The design mimics one lateral side of an Anomozamites frond—appearing as if the frond was split along its central rachis to form a symmetrical half. When at rest, the insect's paired forewings would align to create the illusion of a complete Anomozamites frond, with leaflets arranged along a central axis.
Statistical analysis revealed a striking correlation: both the Aboilinae orthopterans and Anomozamites exhibited similar trends in species richness—peaking in the Middle Jurassic and declining by the Early Cretaceous. This pattern suggests a potential ecological association between the two groups.
Additional clues support this link: Aboilus and Sigmaboilus were large herbivorous insects in the Daohugou Biota, and Anomozamites leaves from the same fossil beds show shallow-to-deep scalloped incisions along their margins—traces interpreted as herbivory damage. The researchers infer that these Jurassic leaf-mimicking insects lived on and fed on Anomozamites, and that this sustained ecological interaction may have provided the functional context for the evolution of their leaf-mimicry trait.
The study further proposes that rising predation pressure during the Jurassic fueled the evolution of leaf mimicry in orthopterans. While stem birds were rare at the time, the Daohugou Biota hosted a diverse array of predators capable of preying on prophalangopsids (the group to which the fossil orthopterans belong). These included the gliding insectivorous Volaticotherium, the arboreal dinosaurs Epidendrosaurus and Epidexipteryx, and the insectivorous anurognathid pterosaurs Jeholopterus.
In the Cenozoic Era (the "Age of Mammals," beginning ~66 million years ago), katydids—a subgroup of orthopterans—evolved more sophisticated mimicry forms, such as imitations of dead leaves or partially eaten leaves. This increased specialization likely reflects intensified predation pressure, driven by the emergence and rapid diversification of modern bird lineages after the Late Cretaceous and the subsequent radiation of passerine (perching) birds during the Paleogene-Neogene transition (~23 million years ago).
Orthopterans are among the most abundant herbivorous insects today, and fossil records show their mimicry strategies have adapted to shifts in dominant plant groups over geological time: from spore-bearing plants and gymnosperms (e.g., conifers, cycads) in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras to angiosperms in the Cenozoic.
This finding highlights the dynamic interplay between plant community succession, predation pressures and insect defensive traits, the researchers noted.
The research team included collaborators from NIGPAS and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) in Germany. This work was supported by funding from the National Key Research and Development Program of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, among other sources.
Leaf-mimicking orthopteran fossils of Prophalangopsidae from the Daohugou biota.
Image by NIGPAS.
Fossil leaves of Anomozamites.
Image by NIGPAS.
Reconstructions of two prophalangopsid species exhibiting distinct types of mimicry on Anomozamites leaves.
Image by NIGPAS.
The relationship between orthopteran leaf mimicry and the dominant plant groups throughout different geological periods.
Image by NIGPAS.
Publication:
AbstractDiscoveries like this are awkward for creationists on several levels. The first difficulty is the age: these fossils are 165 million years old, from long before flowering plants evolved and tens of millions of years before the end of the dinosaurs. For those who insist Earth is only a few thousand years old, such evidence is not merely inconvenient—it is fatal to their claims.
Animals have evolved diverse defensive strategies under selective pressures, with mimicry being a crucial survival strategy for insects. Leaf mimicry is widespread in modern ecosystems, yet its fossil record remains sparse, often lacking direct evidence of target plant or clear morphological adaptations. We report three novel cases of leaf mimicry in Jurassic orthopterans (grasshoppers and crickets, including katydids) (Prophalangopsidae) from the Daohugou biota (ca. 163.5 Ma, northeastern China), in which the forewings exhibit highly specialized contrasting color patterns that closely resemble the abundantly co-occurring bennettitalean (extinct seed-bearing, cycad-like group) leaves. These cases provide the first unambiguous evidence in which both the mimicking insects and their plant models are preserved in the same bedding plane. It represents the first known instance of orthopteran mimicry in the Jurassic, fills a gap in the fossil record, and suggests that leaf mimicry has been a long-standing adaptive strategy in Orthoptera, independently evolving across different lineages throughout geological history. This finding highlights the dynamic interplay between plant community succession, predation pressures, and insect defensive strategies, expanding our understanding of the ecological significance and evolution of leaf mimicry in orthopterans.
Yanzhe Fu, Chong Dong, Dolev Fabrikant, Chenyang Cai, Carolin Haug, Joachim T. Haug, Diying Huang
Unique leaf mimicry in Jurassic insects.
Geology 2025; doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/G53399.1
© 2025 Geological Society of America.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
But the greater problem lies in the supposed “designer”. What kind of intelligence would create predators to eat a given prey, then immediately design the prey to be invisible to those predators? This is not strategy but self-sabotage — an arms race conducted against oneself. To describe it as “intelligent design” stretches both words past breaking point. An amnesiac tinkerer might behave this way, forgetting what it designed earlier and thinking it's a new problem to be solved, but not an omniscient being. Natural selection, on the other hand, requires no foresight and no plan. It simply favours any trait, however makeshift, that helps an organism survive and reproduce, and in doing so generates the very arms races that puzzle creationists.
And this is precisely how the scientists themselves understand these fossils. Their explanations rest firmly on evolution by natural selection, the only theory that accounts for the evidence without contradictions. There is certainly no support here for the absurd claim — repeated for two generations now — that biologists are abandoning the Theory of Evolution in favour of creationism because evolution “doesn’t explain the evidence.”
Creationism offers no explanation at all — only a retreat into mystery whenever evidence like this exposes its failings. Evolution remains, as ever, the best and only serious framework for understanding the history of life on Earth.
In short, creationism loses three times over: once on the timescale, again on the logic, and yet again on its false prophecy of evolution’s “collapse.” Evolution not only explains the evidence—it makes sense of the very absurdities that intelligent design cannot.
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