Blood-sucking flea that live at this time was not nothing in size compared to their ancestors. Recent research suggests the Earth's oldest flea 5-10 times the size of a blood-sucking fleas that exist today.
Although a big body, apparently an ancient blood-sucking fleas can not jump like modern generation fleas. This was revealed by the oldest fleas fossil ever found. Andre Nel, researchers from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, said the ancient flea is an example of the ancient blood-sucking parasites in the fossil record. Nel and colleagues analyzed nine specimens of ancient fossilized flea found on an outcrop of rock in China. "Primitive fleas has no strong legs like modern one," he said.
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| Jurasic Fleas. (Picture from: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/) |
Nel to ensure the condition of ancient flea biology and behavior is also different than the modern flea. Ancient flea move by crawling between hair and fur of their host. The ancient flea live in the early Mesozoic era, which spanned a geological time 250-65 million years ago, and includes the Jurassic period, the era of the dinosaurs.
Diying Huang, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Science in Nanjing, China, said the ancient fleas were very large compared with the current fleas. Female specimen has a body length of more than 2 centimeters. Just for comparison, modern flea is never a length of more than 3 millimeters.
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| Fleas of the Mesozoic were relative giants, like this 15-millimeter-long fossilized male found in China. (Picture from: http://lezgetreal.com/) |
Body size and mouth are also great party makes it easy the ancient flea to discover big-size hosts, such as dinosaurs. "The mouth sucker is sharp and long to make them easily penetrate the skin of the dinosaurs," said Huang.
Nel said the fossils of ancient fleas are now stored in the collection of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese and used to study the evolutionary gap bloodsucking fleas. *** [LIVESCIENCE | GUARDIAN | MAHARDIKA SATRIA HADI | KORAN TEMPO 3810]
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