Early Cretaceous; and the end-Cretaceous (Cretaceous–Paleocene; K-P). There also is an analogous record of insect origination that is characterized by major, above-background events. Four methods are used to detect insect extinction in the fossil record. The taxic approach is widely used, whereby the temporal durations of fossil taxa are tallied for each geologic unit of interest and analyzed in a manner analogous to demography used in ecology. By contrast, the phylogenetic approach uses clades as the basic units of interest. A recent approach uses proxy data such as quantification of plant–insect associations across major boundaries in lieu of an insect body–fossil record. Last, the clustering of times of origin from modern coevolved plant–insect associations provides data for likely interruptions from major paleoenvironmental perturbations. Pluralism, emphasizing multiple approaches to determine the ecological dynamics of insects during an extinction, is the best strategy to evaluate insect demise or survival in the fossil record. Key words: extinction, origination, biodiversity, fossil insects