Description

Early Cretaceous (Berriasian)
Yixian Formation
Huangbangi Valley, Beipiao, Liaoning Province, China
Fine 0.5 inch mayfly larva.

Insect, Arthropod.

Mayflies are famous for their short lives as adults often said to be just one day but they can live two days.  As opposed to adults, mayflies can live as nymphs for more than a year.

Here’s a fossil mayfly larva (aka naiad or nymph).  The earliest mayfly ancestors might extend as far back as the Permian or earlier and true mayflies were present by the Triassic.  Fossil mayflies are also known from the Middle Jurassic of China and Australia as well as the Early Cretaceous of Brazil, England. and Myanmar, all of which indicates they were widespread by the time the supercontinent, Pangaea, began to break up during the Jurassic.