Irreplaceable Carboniferous Cockroach Fossil

Description: This exceptional example is a large, detailed member of the Dictyoptera, or Cockroaches. Notice the incredible detail in the venation of the wings. A large, complete black carbon roach on grey shale from the classic coal measures of Commentry in southeast France.

These coal measures form an irregular C-shaped basin of about 9 kilometers in length and nearly 3 kilometers wide. This specimen is from a classic site, submerged and lost forever. The region’s insects were first studied by Charles Brongniart, who described a large (70 cm wingspan) dragonfly called Meganeura from there in 1885.

Contrary to popular belief, this specimen, while sharing many features in common with extant roaches would be more accurately termed a “roachoid”. They possessed a long ovipositor unlike the roaches of the present, a feature that carried through until the Late Jurassic. Contrasting with the Carboniferous roachoids, the true roaches have a fossil history that extends only to the Early Cretaceous, or nearly 200 million years later.

This is a rare, spectacular, and historically important specimen with few equals offered anywhere in the world today.