The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 186 Going deep into the interior

The production of the first Kuai-Wing Diver was quickly completed, and together with the supporting crane workers, they were waiting for the ejection take-off structure to be completed.

Compared with the previous generation, the new generation of Kuai-Wing Divers has the smallest changes among many grades. It only has some minor optimizations and no major changes.

On the one hand, in order to lose weight, and on the other hand, because there is no demand, Lin Yi did not fully replace the exoskeleton containing minerals for the Kui-Wing Diver. Instead, he only reinforced some key parts and used mineral ingredients. Also slightly different.

In terms of body shape, the new generation of Kui-Wing Divers has also not changed. The wingspan is still about five or six meters. The only change is that the inner wall exoskeleton of their jet propulsion system has also been strengthened to withstand more violent reactions. .

This allowed Lin Yi to once again adjust the specific composition of the propellant so that it could provide greater thrust and slightly expand its capacity, allowing it to carry more propellant and obtain a longer afterburner endurance.

In terms of other structures, there are not many improvements to the Kingwing Diver. After all, starting from the Mortar Terror Spider, each major grade is just a platform carrying modular individuals. The real major upgrade needs to be carried out from the small individuals, such as Those biological cannonballs or aerial bombs are reflected.

In other words, the latest level of the Kuei-Wing Diver is already perfect. With the current level of technology, further upgrades are not impossible, but the cost and performance-to-price ratio will become ugly. Without demand, There is no need to continue upgrading the Quirkwing Diver.

This era is no longer what it used to be. Giant insects and beasts are also rampant on land, and even a single Crazy-Toothed Saw Ant may not be able to reap the benefits. But in the air, novices were still pecking each other. The most powerful insect of the order Kuoptera, in a sense, is an imposter. In front of the Kuoptera diver, there is the same gap between a chaffinch and a swan.

The structure of the aerial bomb has not been improved because there is no demand for it for the time being. It has only improved the genetic sequence of Euglena to make its echolocation ability and vision more developed, so that it can better play a reconnaissance role.

While thinking, several land workers walked out from the mother nest group at the rear, and their bodies lay on the newly formed fungus carpet. The fungus carpet tissue below wriggled and proliferated, and soon wrapped the bodies of these workers. .

Soon, at the original position of several workers, the pupa sac structure began to expand, and the deep roots penetrated into the soil, fixing the structure above - the catapult take-off structure of the King-Winged Diver.

The crane swung its surprisingly well-developed chelicerae, slowly lifting the huge body of the Kui-Wing Diver, and placed it entirely on the launcher structure. Then, the two appendages that formed the launcher formed the internal hydraulic muscle system. Drive it up slowly to complete the final preparations for ejection.

Another set of hydraulic muscle structures suddenly exerted force, and the explosive force immediately pushed the huge body of the Kuwinged Diver into the sky. Immediately, the broad hind wings flapped, pushing the body to stabilize its shape and continue to climb upward.

Under the dual thrust of the jet propulsion system and the hind wings, the body of the long-winged diver quickly climbed into the air. A pair of compound eyes and a Euglena carried at the end of its abdomen scanned the earth, searching for creatures in the dense fern forest.

The biological composition of this era is indeed consistent with the Late Carboniferous to the Early Permian. It is mainly composed of a large number of amphibians and a small amount of early synapsids. However, the large terrestrial arthropods in the middle and late Carboniferous have basically disappeared, and only aerial ones are left. There are many large-bodied insects of the order Quechioptera and Archaeoptera.

In the river swamp, Lin Yi also saw a familiar figure - a body more than two meters long, like a widened water drop shape, crawling in the mud with heavy steps, rummaging through the humus in an attempt to find a trace of it. Something to satisfy your hunger.

Hibbert's horseshoe crabs are one of the last species of plate-footed horseshoe crabs. In their compound eyes, there is no trace of the aura that once stood on the top of the sea - although the ancestors of the spiny-tailed horseshoe crabs to which they belong were garbage collectors. It’s just that I didn’t have the scenery.

In a sense, now, Lin Yi's nest group, which was born out of a giant feather-winged horseshoe crab, is already the hope of the entire plate-footed horseshoe crab village - after the rise of more and more advanced species, the plate-footed horseshoe crab The decline of horseshoe crabs is a foregone conclusion, and even without the world-shattering natural disaster, the situation will not change. Continuing to fly forward, the dense fern forest suddenly became sparse, replaced by a large amount of low vegetation and a large area of ​​desert.

From the late Carboniferous to the early Permian, Gondwana and Laurasia merged into the broad Pangea, which surrounded an inland sea called the Tethys Sea and faced the broad Panocean across the land.

Coupled with various topographic reasons, the moist air from the ocean cannot reach the deep interior, resulting in large areas of dry desert.

In a sense, it also promoted the further evolution of amphibians that completely landed on land in the Carboniferous Period and separated from water sources, becoming more advanced groups, namely Sauriformes and Synapsids.

After drought and anoxia severely hit the large arthropods of the Carboniferous, early synapsids survived in this vast desert and evolved predators of unprecedented size.

But at this time, Lin Yi no longer cared about these wild animals. After all, the gene language technology now allows Lin Yi to no longer need to painstakingly absorb gene sequences, and can assemble the structure of most living creatures under normal circumstances.

What he is more concerned about is the traces of nest colonies, such as whether the hostile terrestrial arthropod nest colonies have been completely eradicated, and whether new nest colonies have been born in these hundreds of millions of years.

And, Lin Yi still feels that the truth about the end-Devonian mass extinction, the longest mass extinction event in history, is not that simple.

To this end, he plans to start exploring the place where the mass extinction began - that is, the location of the craters caused by the two meteorites that hit the earth during the Frasian period of the Late Devonian.

In later studies, the cause of the Kelvasa event, the first stage of the end-Devonian mass extinction, was not clear. Meteor impact was just one of many hypotheses.

But if it is really a large-scale crustal movement and volcanic eruption caused by a meteorite impact, then if two meteorites that can cause damage collide in a short period of time, things will become not simple.

After all, the last time such a large-scale meteorite impact was a Middle Ordovician meteor event. And that event brought about the mother nest and the nest colony. Now, does this meteorite impact in the Devonian period also bring about something?

Everything requires finding the meteorite impact site, investigating it, and then making plans.

To this end, Lin Yi plans to develop a new grade again to achieve various comprehensive purposes more conveniently.

(End of this chapter)