Fossilized Mosquito Has Blood-filled Abdomen

ananyo writes "Jurassic Park's iconic image of a fossilized blood-filled mosquito was thought to be fiction — until now. For the first time, researchers have identified a fossil of a female mosquito with traces of blood in its engorged abdomen. The fossilized mosquito contains molecules that provide strong evidence of blood-feeding among ancient insects back to 46 million years ago (paper abstract). The insect was found not in amber, as depicted in Jurassic Park, but in shale sediments from Montana. After 46 million years, however, any DNA would be long degraded."

Re:That's why it was fossilized

[Anonymous Coward]

While Buffy is entertaining I would argue that it is part of what destroyed vampires. The whole idea of making vampires into some sort of demon things was a pretty bad take on vampires in my opinion.

Also, with vampire Willow and dark Willow, pre-teen girly hearts isn't the only thing that throbs.

beyond time immemorial

[harvey the nerd]

The real bottom line is that we should be searching for cold spots, like Antarctic caves, with relict animal DNA that might average -57C (-70F). Then let's see how many million years we can drive DNA recovery.