Dino-Era Bug Has Not Changed Its Eating-Habits for “130 Million Years”

Ancient bugs might have feasted on dinosaur blood.



Joel Kontinen

Some bugs had nasty habits “130 million years” ago, a recent paper published in the journal Current Biology suggests.

The paper reported on “a new family of true bugs including two new genera and species from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation in Northeastern China.”

The researchers admit that mammals, birds and dinosaurs lived at that time but they do not know what the bugs feasted on.

Evolution should be about change. But many studies suggest that stasis or non-evolution of even habits (in this case, eating blood) seems to be the norm in the animal kingdom.

And there’s no shortage of living fossils.

Source:

Yao, Yunzhi et al. 2014. Blood-Feeding True Bugs in the Early Cretaceous. Current Biology. (Published online July 24).