1978] 
Burnham — Social Insects in Fossil Record 
87 
Figure 1. Cretatermes carpenteri Emerson from lower part of Upper Cretaceous 
of Labrador. Note humeral suture at wing base. Original photograph of holotype in 
Princeton Museum. Length of wing, 7.5 mm. 
geographical distribution provides strong evidence to support a 
Mesozoic origin of the order. He argues (1975) that the breakup of 
the united land mass Pangaea in the Permian or Lower Triassic 
must have occurred subsequently to the origin of the Isoptera to 
explain their distribution in the southern and northern continental 
land masses and that all five families must have been present in the 
Late Mesozoic to explain their diversity and distribution by the 
Tertiary. 
In 1971 he looked at a variety of primitive and derived characters 
of each family and analyzed the geographical distribution of the 
groups, using plate tectonics to provide the following estimates on 
the geological origin of the families: 
Mastotermitidae — possibly Early Mesozoic. 
Hodotermitidae — Triassic, or Early Jurassic before the breakup 
of southern continents. 
Kalotermitidae — mid-Jurassic, or Lower Cretaceous, before the 
separation of Africa and South America. 
Rhinotermitidae — Late Jurassic, Early Cretaceous. 
Termitidae — Cretaceous. 
Because termites are such poor fliers and do not mate until the 
adults have cast their wings, he considers water gaps of more than 
50 miles capable of preventing termite dispersal. 
While I am supportive of the theory that places great importance 
on the role of a unified land mass in animal dispersal, I do not agree 
that this can effectively be used to date the origin of the Isoptera. 
