Despite their might and savage reputation , prehistorical dinosaur hid a banal problem behind their feather whorl : lice .
A freshly identified species of dirt ball have been rule on the feathers of a mid - Cretaceous dinosaur trapped inside gold . At more or less 100 million old age old , these teeny worm - like insects are the other known grounds that louse like to chow down on dinosaur feathers .
Reported in the journalNature Communicationstoday , the two chunks of gold were originally chance on in the Kachin Province of northern Myanmar , a Southeast Asiatic res publica where anincredible amount of amberis find . These two pieces of amber date to the mid - Cretaceous point somewhere around the 100 - million - class - old mark , although they ’re perhaps Old .
Mesophthirus angelicrawling on the dinosaur feather in mid - Cretaceous amber . Taiping Gao
Inside the two pieces of gold , scientist from Capital Normal University in Beijing and the National Museum of Natural History in DC find 10 worm houri preserved on two dinosaur feathers , which were 12.7 millimeters and 13.6 mm in distance . While the researchers are n’t sure of the dinosaur species , they trust the feathering belonged to a non - avian coelurosaurian dinosaur , a extensive clade that include tyrannosaurs , ornithomimosaurs , and maniraptorans .
Perhaps most interesting of all , one of the feathering appear to be damage , suggest it had been chewed on by the lice , according to the researchers . DubbedMesophthirus engeli , the 0.14 - millimeter to 0.23 - millimeter - long dirt ball are extremely similar to the kind of modernistic lice you ’d expect to see on a bird , utter with warm chewing jaws and protracted mandibles .
While this is not the first metre sponge living on dinosaur have been line , it is the early unmediated evidence yet of lice - like insects dwelling in the feathers of mid - Cretaceous dinosaur . The mid - Cretaceous was a good time to be a feather - loving louse . This was a period that saw a huge diversification of birds and other feathered dinosaurs . It appears that , perhaps , theM.engelilice were taking full reward of this .
" This determination demonstrates that feather - feeding behaviors of insects originated at least in mid - Cretaceous , attach to the radiation of feathered dinosaur include former dame , " the study authors indite .
It reckon like these lice were not the only leech to vex about , either . A study published in 2017detailed the find of a check that sucked the pedigree of feathered dinosaur from the Cretaceous period .
