An American paleontologist has found a fossilized mosquito in whose stomach there were still traces of blood from its latest victim . The blood could be around 46 million years old and, according to experts, it would belong to a bird. The finding is one of the few primitive evidence of hematophagy , a behavior that, despite being shared by 14,000 species of insects existing today and seems to have evolved independently in various organisms, has barely left a fossil record.
Dale Greenwalt was looking for insects in the mountains when he made this discovery, which has been published in the journal PNAS , and will then proceed to study their DNA. Based on its characteristics, researchers have pointed out that it is a species that flew long after the dinosaurs became extinct . However, the bird from which he took the blood would be a descendant of these, which "can provide a lot of data," the scientist has indicated.
As for the contents of your stomach, two different types of X-ray light have been used to determine what chemicals are present. Thus it has been determined that the mosquito's belly was full of iron , one of the main characteristics of the blood that carries oxygen to the rest of the body. In addition, evidence has been found of porphyrins , which bind to iron in the blood, which leaves no doubt that it is this vital fluid.
