re: Pointless theoretical estimation question re: ants

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Dinosours were alive 200 million plus years ago. I would think ants have been around a he'll of a lot longer than dinos.

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The family Formicidae belongs to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes sawflies, bees, and wasps. Ants evolved from a lineage within the aculeate wasps, and a 2013 study suggests that they are a sister group of the Apoidea.[17] In 1966, E. O. Wilson and his colleagues identified the fossil remains of an ant (Sphecomyrma) that lived in the Cretaceous period. The specimen, trapped in amber dating back to around 92 million years ago, has features found in some wasps, but not found in modern ants.[18]

Sphecomyrma possibly was a ground forager, while Haidomyrmex and Haidomyrmodes, related genera in subfamily Sphecomyrminae, are reconstructed as active arboreal predators.[19] After the rise of flowering plants about 100 million years ago they diversified and assumed ecological dominance around 60 million years ago.[20][21][22][23] Some groups, such as the Leptanillinae and Martialinae, are suggested to have diversified from early primitive ants that were likely to have been predators underneath the surface of the soil.[2][24]

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