Detecting Extinction in the Insect Fossil Record Four basic approaches are available for understanding insect extinction in the fossil record (Fig. 5). The taxic approach (Fig. 5a) overwhelmingly has been the most frequently used (Rohdendorf and Zherikhin 1974, Dmitriev and Zherikhin 1988, Labandeira and Sepkoski 1993, Ross and Jarzembowski 1993a, Jarzembowski and Ross 1996). It is dependent on extensive databases that list the global geochronologic occurrence of fossil insect taxa that historically have been determined at the family level (Dmitriev and Zherikhin 1988