Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Nov 13, 2013 8:38:36 GMT -6
See What They Found INSIDE a Fossil!
Timeline: 46 million years ago. A prehistoric female mosquito is buzzing around a hot and sticky tropical forest looking for dinner. She bites into an unsuspecting creature and drinks her fill of blood. And then a sharp wind kicks up, blowing her into a lake. She dies and sinks beneath the water's surface, her belly full.
Timeline: 2013. That lake was in what is now northwestern Montana. And that miniscule mosquito has been found fossilized in a paper-thin piece of shale with her last blood meal found intact inside her, making it the first such fossil find ever.
The Associated Press reports that the fossil was found in a very unusual place: the basement of a house where it sat for 25 to 30 years along with a bunch of other rocks.
And while there is no risk of a "Jurassic Park"-type reincarnation--first, the mosquito lived after dinosaurs were extinct, and second, it is scientifically impossible for DNA from other animals to survive in insect fossils--it is a biological first to find a blood-engorged fossil.
Lead study author Dale Greenwalt, a retired biochemist who collects and analyzes insect fossils from Montana for the Smithsonian Institution, told AP that the mosquito likely feasted on a bird that was descended from the dinosaurs.
How did the team find the blood in the mosquito's belly? Greenwalt explained that they used two different types of light-refracting X-rays to determine which chemicals were present. And what they found was a belly full of iron. It is iron in blood that gets oxygen to the rest of the body. The iron levels in the mosquito's belly were far higher than elsewhere in her body. In addition, the team found evidence of porphyrins, which are bound to iron in blood. Between the iron and the porphyrins, Greenwalt says there is "a definitive case" for blood in the belly.
The study findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Timeline: 46 million years ago. A prehistoric female mosquito is buzzing around a hot and sticky tropical forest looking for dinner. She bites into an unsuspecting creature and drinks her fill of blood. And then a sharp wind kicks up, blowing her into a lake. She dies and sinks beneath the water's surface, her belly full.
Timeline: 2013. That lake was in what is now northwestern Montana. And that miniscule mosquito has been found fossilized in a paper-thin piece of shale with her last blood meal found intact inside her, making it the first such fossil find ever.
The Associated Press reports that the fossil was found in a very unusual place: the basement of a house where it sat for 25 to 30 years along with a bunch of other rocks.
And while there is no risk of a "Jurassic Park"-type reincarnation--first, the mosquito lived after dinosaurs were extinct, and second, it is scientifically impossible for DNA from other animals to survive in insect fossils--it is a biological first to find a blood-engorged fossil.
Lead study author Dale Greenwalt, a retired biochemist who collects and analyzes insect fossils from Montana for the Smithsonian Institution, told AP that the mosquito likely feasted on a bird that was descended from the dinosaurs.
How did the team find the blood in the mosquito's belly? Greenwalt explained that they used two different types of light-refracting X-rays to determine which chemicals were present. And what they found was a belly full of iron. It is iron in blood that gets oxygen to the rest of the body. The iron levels in the mosquito's belly were far higher than elsewhere in her body. In addition, the team found evidence of porphyrins, which are bound to iron in blood. Between the iron and the porphyrins, Greenwalt says there is "a definitive case" for blood in the belly.
The study findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
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