…about ten times the size of modern dog fleas, and equipped with a large, sharp proboscis like a hypodermic needle.
It takes a gutsy insect to sneak up on a huge dinosaur while it sleeps, crawl onto its soft underbelly and give it a bite that might have felt like a needle going in — but giant “flea-like” animals, possibly the oldest of their type ever discovered, probably did just that.
And a few actually lived through the experience, based on the discovery by Chinese scientists of remarkable fossils of these creatures, just announced in Current Biology, a professional journal.
These flea-like animals, similar but not identical to modern fleas, were probably 10 times the size of a flea you might find crawling on the family dog — with an extra-painful bite to match.
“These were insects much larger than modern fleas and from the size of their proboscis we can tell they would have been mean,” said George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus of zoology at Oregon State University, who wrote a commentary on this find in the same journal.
“You wouldn’t talk much about the good old days if you got bit by this insect,” Poinar said. “It would have felt about like a hypodermic needle going in — a flea shot, if not a flu shot. We can be thankful our modern fleas are not nearly this big.”
Full report: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120501162730.htm