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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday December 13 2017, @12:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the jurassic-park-2.0 dept.

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 PĂ©rez-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)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @12:27PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @12:27PM (#609192)

    another is swollen with blood

    And so it begins...

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 13 2017, @06:03PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday December 13 2017, @06:03PM (#609299)

      > > Another is swollen with blood
      > And so it begins...

      Unless you have a baculum, that's indeed a requirement.

  • (Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday December 13 2017, @01:11PM

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 13 2017, @01:11PM (#609201)

    I'm sure somebody will use DNA analysis to prove ancestry and proudly put it in their law-firm title, like "Consulting since -99M BC".

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 13 2017, @03:07PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 13 2017, @03:07PM (#609227) Journal

    Now we know where the race started!!

  • (Score: 2) by rob_on_earth on Wednesday December 13 2017, @03:26PM

    by rob_on_earth (5485) on Wednesday December 13 2017, @03:26PM (#609232) Homepage

    This is a great book that shows how large parts of evolution were directly influenced by parasites.

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=parasite+rex&oq=parasite+rex&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.3434j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 [google.co.uk]

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 13 2017, @03:33PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday December 13 2017, @03:33PM (#609234)

    It wiped out almost all the dinosaurs (except those which evolved into birds), but why couldn't it have wiped out the ticks too?

  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday December 13 2017, @05:29PM (1 child)

    by Freeman (732) on Wednesday December 13 2017, @05:29PM (#609282) Journal

    I doubt a finding that there were ticks on dinosaurs is terribly surprising. Next up, there were fleas too!

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 13 2017, @10:10PM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday December 13 2017, @10:10PM (#609431) Journal

      Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on; While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

      There was always a food chain.
      Nobody was surprised.
      Its turtles all the way down.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @05:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @05:51PM (#609292)

    Considering the YUGE evolution step of hair foliciles expressing just a single strand of hair, then consider, not the the ability of feathers, but rather the complex hair folicule that ex-volopes from a single strand, dead, into a complex feather. Wow!
    Now consider ... for a moment, the normally dead hair folicole ... retained life. A feather with a hearth .. and life, so to speak.
    Evolutionized into a feather, tiny, with, legs and sex and all, a skin cell ready to give you a rash .. so to speak.. lol.
    A alien that doesnt need to jump into your mouth, but rather is simple shed, daily, from the skin of the feathered dinosaur to infect "the less able skin" :)

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