Dinomites were here
Dinosaurs were tormented by parasitic mites, new research suggests. Dave Martill of the University of Portsmouth and his colleague Paul Davis used an electron microscope to study a well-preserved, 120 mil- lion-year-old fossil feather. The feather was found in Brazil and looks like a tail feather from Archaeopteryx, a prehistoric bird that evolved from the Jurassic giants. The feather was covered with more than 200-odd hollow spheres about seven millimetres in diameter - the right size for mite eggs. "Birds not only inherited their feathers from the dinosaurs, but inherited their feather parasites as well," Martill concludes. He thinks the parasites were so painful that the animal had probably plucked the feather itself (Nature, Vol 396, No 3142).