Licelike insects munched on dinosaur feathers around 100 million years ago
Feathered dinosaurs, including early birds, may have dealt with pests similar to lice around 100 million years ago. A newfound ancient insect species, dubbed Mesophthirus engeli, was found preserved with dinosaur feathers in two pieces of Myanmar amber dating to the mid-Cretaceous Period (SN: 7/24/14). The fossils are the earliest evidence found of insects feeding on feathers, researchers report December 10 in Nature Communications. The previous record-holder was a fossilized louse from roughly 44 million years ago, says Taiping Gao, a paleoentomologist from Capital Normal University in Beijing. M. engeli looks somewhat like modern lice, with teeth and a thick, wingless body. The insects also have anatomical traits seen in other ectoparasites — those that live outside of their host’s body. In one piece of amber that Gao and colleagues analyzed under a microscope, the team found nine insects on or near a feather. That feather had damage holes toward its end, but not near its base — a pattern that also occurs when lice chomp...