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takyon writes:

Fossil evidence suggests that feathered dinosaurs were infested with ticks:

Feathered dinosaurs were covered in ticks just like modern animals, fossil evidence shows. Parasites similar to modern ticks have been found inside pieces of amber from Myanmar dating back 99 million years. One is entangled with a dinosaur feather, another is swollen with blood, and two were in a dinosaur nest.

Scientists say the discovery, which has echoes of Jurassic Park, is the first direct fossil evidence that ticks fed on the blood of dinosaurs. The research is published in the journal, Nature Communications. "Ticks parasitised feathered dinosaurs; now we have direct evidence of it," co-researcher Dr Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History told BBC News. "This paper represents a very good example of the kind of detailed information that can be extracted from amber fossils."

Prototicks? On my nanoraptors?

Also at Science Magazine, NYT, and NPR.

Parasitised feathered dinosaurs as revealed by Cretaceous amber assemblages (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01550-z) (DX)

Original Submission