The world of palentology has been abuzz since the discovery of a 99 million-year-old tick holding onto a feather of a dinosaur – indicating the parasite fed on the blood of the prehistoric monsters.
The find is so incredible because it is incredibly rare to find a parasite with its host and provides the clearest evidence yet that ticks dined on dino blood.
And the blood from the tick could theoretically be used to bring back dinosaurs.
Earlier this year, science expert and author Helen Pilcher claimed species can be brought back from extinction.
In her book “Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-extinction”, Pilcher wrote: “What if, many millions of years ago, there had been a hungry mosquito that dined on a dinosaur then became trapped in amber, with its last supper still inside its stomach.
“If one could recover a dinosaur blood cell from inside that mosquito and then transplant it into an egg that had had its own DNA removed [it is possible to] grow a dinosaur.
“A modern living dinosaur is not a fantasy.”
David Grimaldi, an entomologist who published a paper about the tick find in the journal, Nature Communications, hailed the recent find as incredible for furthering understanding of dinosaurs.
Discussing how his team found the parasite in Myanmar, said: “Holy moly this is cool.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to find ticks directly associated with the dinosaur feathers.
“These nanoraptors were living in trees and fell into these great big blobs of oozing resin and were snagged.
“We’re looking at a microcosm here of life in the trees 100-million years ago in northern Myanmar.”
But science writer Pilcher doesn’t think a Tyrannosaurus Rex will be walking around Earth any time soon.
She explained: “To de-extinct an animal, you need a source of that animal’s DNA.
“But all we have for dinosaurs are their remains, cast in stone,” adding: “Dogma has it that when fossilisation is complete, any organic trace of the animal is gone.”
