Mantis fossils from the age of dinosaurs

The oldest sure mantis

The oldest fossils firmly accepted as mantises are from the Early Cretaceous (about 145 to 100 million years ago). Cretaceous mantis fossils are very rare and often fragmentary.

A representative fossil is Santanmantis (Santanmantis axelrodi) from the Crato Formation in Brazil. It's a mantis from about 110 million years ago, with a body length of about 10 mm. A well-preserved specimen reported in 2017 had large spines on the femur and tibia of the middle legs too. The researchers interpreted this to mean that early mantises may have used their middle legs, as well as their front legs, to catch prey, though this interpretation drew objections.

A baby mantis trapped in amber

Mantises have also been found in Cretaceous amber (hardened tree resin, a gemstone) from Myanmar, Lebanon, and Spain. Several Cretaceous mantis genera such as Burmantis and Jersimantis were recorded mainly from nymph specimens.

In Labrador, Canada, a fossil wing impression of the mantis Labradormantis guilbaulti, about 100 million years old, was found. The researchers compared the wing vein structure to work out its relationship to the most primitive groups of living mantises.

Jurassic mantises are still disputed

Older Jurassic mantis fossils have been reported. Juramantis, from Jurassic rocks in Mongolia, is only a single wing fragment, so it isn't certain it's a mantis, and a fossil reported from Late Jurassic rocks in Kazakhstan in 2024 needs more verification by the scientific community. So we don't state flatly that "the oldest mantis is a Jurassic fossil."

Relationship to cockroaches and termites

Mantises, cockroaches, and termites together form a group called Dictyoptera. According to genetic analysis, termites are a branch that split off from within the cockroach group, and mantises are the sister group to the whole "cockroaches + termites" group.

So the saying that "mantises evolved from cockroaches" isn't right. Mantises and cockroaches are cousins that split from a common ancestor, and it's the termites that fall inside the cockroach group.

The timing according to fossils and genes

Analyses that work backward from the amount of change accumulated in genes to estimate timing (molecular clocks) estimate the following. Studies differ by tens of millions of years.

Genetic analysis points to the Jurassic and secure fossils to the Cretaceous. That's because they measure different things. Genes estimate when a lineage split, while fossils show when that lineage was preserved in rock and found. Either way, they agree that mantises were already living in the age of dinosaurs.

About 2,500 species today

About 2,400–2,500 mantis species are currently recorded. A 2025 paper citing the Mantodea Species File, a mantis taxonomy database, counted 2,514 living mantises, and new species keep being recorded. The number of families differs between sources as the classification system changes.

Research in this article