No real life scientist has ever even found a fossilized mosquito bloated with blood. In fact, the odds of that happening are so infinitesimal, and the set of circumstances that would have to occur is so peculiar, that such a find was thought to be as good as impossible.
But a new paper published this week clarifies that finding a blood-filled mosquito is not, in fact, impossible – it’s just improbable. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have described the first ever fossil to be found with a blood meal inside its abdomen. The 46-million-year-old mosquito contains heme, a chemical compound found in hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells, and it is the first conclusive, direct evidence of blood feeding in ancient insects.
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