Scientists have shed new light on the Dracula-like role played by vampiric, blood-sucking ticks during the time of the dinosaurs, according to a new study.
"Ticks are infamous blood-sucking, parasitic organisms, having a tremendous impact on the health of humans, livestock, pets, and even wildlife, but until now clear evidence of their role in deep time has been lacking," Enrique Penalver, lead researcher of the Spanish Geological Survey (IGME) study, told BBC news.
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Known as Deinocroton draculi, or "Dracula's terrible tick," the parasites are known to have sucked blood from theropods, the two-legged feathered dinosaurs.
The study is partially based on evidence from a Burmese hardened resin, which revealed a trapped tick bloated with blood and dangling from the feather of a dinosaur, which is believed to have lived during the Cretaceous Period.
"Although we can't be sure what type of dinosaur the tick was feeding on, the mid-Cretaceous age of the Burmese amber confirms that the feather certainly did not belong to a modern bird, as these appeared much later," Ricardo Perez-de la Fuente, author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications and a researcher at Oxford University, told the Guardian.
Perez-de la Fuente, who came up with the theory, has been studying ticks for a long time. He has also examined other specimens, stuck in resin from the same period, who bore little hairs resembling those left behind by a type of beetle larva that still lives in birds' nests today.
"The paper is a pleasant surprise," said Ben Mans, a paleontologist who has studied tick evolution.
Perez-de la Fuente told NPR: "Amber is fossilized resin, so it's able to capture small bits of the ecosystem almost instantly. Amber can actually preserve interactions between organisms. This is the case with the feather and the grasping tick."