The tick sucked the whole blood of dinosaurs 99 million years in amber grave

The tick sucked the blood of dinosaurs 99 million years ago and died hard with an intact body that clearly saw both the feathers and teeth of the amber tomb surrounding.

New research by British scientists focuses on an immature tick that clings to dinosaur hairs , die hard millions of years ago inside a plastic plastic grave that has turned into amber, according to Live Science. The remarkable discovery is described with other specimens, providing additional evidence for ticks that attract dinosaur blood.

Amber mite species.(Video: National Geographic).

Scientists speculate that hairy dinosaurs certainly contain parasites like birds today. Mites found in amber are very similar to modern mites, suggesting they have similar parasitic habits. But before, no fossils directly demonstrated the relationship between dinosaurs and tiny arthropods that lived on their bodies.

The beetle attaches to its hairs and congeners discovered inside 4 glossy Burmese amber blocks, found in Myanmar. Private collectors bought amber attention to small objects inside and shared information with paleontologist and research co-author Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente at the Natural History Museum, Oxford University, England.

After a closer examination, the team realized the object in one of them was an immature tick that stuck to the dinosaur hair. Direct detection of a parasite with its host is particularly rare in fossil record, according to Pérez-de la Fuente. The results of the study are published Dec. 12 in the journal Nature Communications.

The tick comes from the burmanicum Cornupalpatum of a popular group today that is a hard tick , has a shield-like structure on its back to protect them from being crushed by the host. In the immature stage, this tick is voracious and actively absorbs blood.

The amber mass dates back to the middle, helping to eliminate the possibility that a feather belongs to a modern bird that appears at the end of its evolution.

The tick caught in a dinosaur hair when it died.(Photo: National Geographic).

The fossils preserved in amber remain in 3D shape and show special soft tissue details that are often lost if they become fossil rocks, making them of poor quality . "We can observe the smallest details such as hair, even teeth in the mouth of the tick, structures that pierce through the tissue, allowing the tick to cling to the host's skin," Pérez-de la Fuente said. .

Amber also helps save part of the ancient ecosystem environment, helping scientists consider the interaction between two species, in this case the hair that the tick attaches to. This feature will certainly be lost if the hairs are preserved between the stones.

Because ticks and other parasites spend most of their lives on the host, they are less likely to be trapped in ancient sap and wrapped in amber graves than insects like ants and termites.

The finding also revealed how some infectious diseases can be spread among hairy dinosaurs. Today's mites are a common vector for mammals, birds and reptiles. Perhaps millions of years ago, ticks also carry pathogenic bacteria back and forth between hosts they parasitize.