Giant Flea-Like Insects Delivering Unusually Painful Bite Plagued Dinosaurs 165 Million Years Ago
Posted on May 1, 2012
Giant-flea like insects have been discovered that plagued dinosaurs 165 million years ago. The insects likely approached a huge dinosaur while it slept, crawling onto its soft underbelly and giving it a bite that might have felt like a needle going in. These insects were 10 times bigger than modern fleas and likely had an extra-painful bite due to their large proboscis. The discovery was announced in the journal, Current Biology.
George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus of zoology at Oregon State University, says, "These were insects much larger than modern fleas and from the size of their proboscis we can tell they would have been mean. You wouldn't talk much about the good old days if you got bit by this insect. It would have felt about like a hypodermic needle going in - a flea shot, if not a flu shot. We can be thankful our modern fleas are not nearly this big."
Poinar, who is an international expert in ancient and extinct insect life forms, said it's possible that the soft-bodied, flea-like insects found in these fossils from Inner Mongolia are the evolutionary ancestors of modern fleas, but most likely they belong to a separate and now extinct lineage.
Called Pseudopulex jurassicus and Pseudopulex magnus, these insects had bodies that were more flat, like a bedbug or tick, and long claws that could reach over scales on the skin of dinosaurs so they could hold onto them tightly while sucking blood.
"These are really well-preserved fossils that give us another glimpse of life into the really distant past, the Cretaceous and Jurassic," said Poinar, who has also studied "younger" fleas from 40-50 million years ago preserved in amber.