NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, DALE GREENWALTResearchers from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, DC, have discovered the first ever fossilized blood meal, according to a paper published today (October 14) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Large and labile molecules like DNA cannot be detected in fossils this old with current technology, but the 46-million-year-old mosquito holds clues about when blood-feeding behavior originated in insects and about the survival of other biomolecules like heme, which the researchers identified in the fossil.
“[The paper] shows that details of a blood sucking mosquito can be nicely preserved in a medium other than amber,” paleontologist George Poinar of Oregon State University, who was not involved in this research, wrote in an e-mail to The Scientist. “The paper also establishes that blood-filled mosquitoes were already active at that time, suggesting that they were around much earlier” than previously realized, he added.
The paper is “powerful” evidence that certain molecules in blood persist longer than scientists might expect, said Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University who was also not involved in the work.
The chances of finding a fossilized mosquito with evidence of a recent blood meal are infinitesimal. Paleobiologist Dale Greenwalt and his wife vacation in Glacier ...
