According to gene and fossil analysis, studies estimate that these species emerged between 120 and 100 million years ago.

Butterflies stand out in the landscape and please biologists because they function as indicators of the health of an environment. Analyzed together, studies indicate that butterflies appeared in the mid-Cretaceous, a geological period that lasted from 145 million to 66 million years ago.

Of the current 39 butterfly subfamilies, eight survived the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. The other butterfly species would have emerged later, between 65 million and 50 million years ago. “Work like this is essential to help understand how species separated over time,” says entomologist Karina Silva-Brandão, from the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), who studies butterfly diversification. “The dates they present will be used in other studies aimed at understanding the causes of speciation.”

Know more: http://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/2019/03/14/a-origem-das-borboletas