The latest analysis of the DNA of about 1,900 species of beetle puts their origin 285 million years ago (mya) in the Permian (Hunt et al. 2007). On the same basis, the whirligigs were a comparatively early offshoot 219 mya in the Triassic, at a time of great change as the great equatorial continent of Pangaea began to break up into the southern Gondwana and the northern Laurasia.