Millions of years ago, during the mid-Mesozoic Era, the dinosaurs were, too, plagued by pests – jumbo-sized flea-like insects that were sneaky enough to suck their blood. These fleas were able to live and tell the tale, as evident by the fossils discovered earlier this year by a group of Chinese researchers in Inner Mongolia.

“These are really well-preserved fossils that give us another glimpse of life into the really distant past,” Oregon State University zoologist George Poinar, Jr states in the university’s press release. Poinar, who researches insect pathology and studies insects (including “‘younger fleas from 40-50 million years”) fossilized in amber, wrote a commentary on the Chinese researchers’ paper, both of which were published in the April 24 issue of the online journal Current Biology.

Two types of species were found: Pseudopulex jurassicus and Pseudopulex magnus, both of which are now the oldest known parasites. The former is smaller and from the middle Jurassic Epoch (approx. 170-160 million years ago). The latter – the larger of the two – lived during the Early Cretaceous Period (approx. 140-100 million years ago), and is the one that sucked blood from dinosaurs.

Although this ancient flea shares many of the anatomical features of the modern flea, they differ in certain aspects. Built to maneuver through fur and hair of smaller mammals, modern fleas are miniscule and compressed and have short antennae.

The Pseudopulex magnus, on the other hand, had a much bigger (and flatter) body, which was around the size of an inch. Its size hints that the flea may have fed on larger animals, including medium-sized mammals and dinosaurs. Because it did not have any extended hind legs, it had not been able to jump.

The Pseudopulex magnus bore long claws that helped them climb on and latch onto the dinosaur’s large scales. It fed itself with a rather large proboscis – one that looks like a hypodermic needle – that would have been able to pierce the soft areas of flesh between the tough scales.

Its bite would be excruciating for mammals and humans alike if this humongous flea were alive today. “We can be thankful our modern fleas are not nearly this big,” says Poinar. Either the dinosaurs did not feel the needle-like proboscis, or the Pseudopulex magnus was quick enough to make a dine and dash.

Poinar states in his commentary that modern fleas may be related to this ancient insect, though they may not be descendants from a direct lineage, and have mostly likely descended from a branch of another species, which is now extinct.

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A team of scientists announces the discovery of a 3.4 million-year-old partial foot from the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region of Ethiopia.  The fossil foot did not belong to “Lucy’s” species, Australopithecus afarensis, the famous early human ancestor.

Research on this new specimen indicates that more than one species of early human ancestor existed between 3 and 4 million years ago with different methods of locomotion.  The analysis will be published in the March 29, 2012 issue of the journal Nature. The partial foot was found in February 2009 in an area known as Burtele.

“The Burtele partial foot clearly shows that at 3.4 million years ago, Lucy’s species, which walked upright on two legs, was not the only hominin species living in this region of Ethiopia,” said lead author and project leader Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History. “Her species co-existed with close relatives who were more adept at climbing trees, like ‘Ardi’s’ species, Ardipithecus ramidus, which lived 4.4 million years ago.”

The partial foot is the first evidence for the presence of at least two pre-human species with different modes of locomotion contemporaneously living in eastern Africa around 3.4 million years ago.  While the big toe of the foot in Lucy’s species was aligned with the other four toes for human-like bipedal walking, the Burtele foot has an opposable big toe like the earlier Ardi.

“This discovery was quite shocking,” said co-author and project co-leader Dr. Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University.  “These fossil elements represent bones we’ve never seen before.

While the grasping big toe could move from side to side, there was no expansion on top of the joint that would allow for expanded range of movement required for pushing off the ground for upright walking.  This individual would have likely had a somewhat awkward gait when on the ground.”

Using the argon-argon radioactive dating method, the fossils were determined to be younger than 3.46 million years, said co-author Dr. Beverly Saylor of Case Western Reserve University.  “Nearby fossils of fish, crocodiles and turtles, and physical and chemical characteristics of sediments show the environment was a mosaic of river and delta channels adjacent to an open woodland of trees and bushes.”

Information and images at www.cmnh.org/site/burtele.aspx.

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This past week news of a new human species has caught the Internet in a whirlwind. An analysis of fossils originally found in southwest China in 1979 has revealed a new type of people that previously inhabited the area.

The bones of the new species were large and thick, much more so than modern peoples’. The recovered skull shows off the species’ easily noticeable brow ridges, their small, flat and short face and also reveals the species lacked a human-like chin.

Darren Curnoe, a researcher at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, was quoted for saying, “In short, it is anatomically unique among all members of the human evolutionary tree.” The skull also blends together a mix of primitive traits present in Homo sapiens’ early ancestors and characteristics found only in modern man.

Christened the ‘Red Deer Cave’ -people because of ample archeological evidence that venison was a large staple of their diet, the find has proven a prediction laid down by evolutionary biologists years ago that new human species would turn up in Asia as scientists examined and looked into more and more fossils from the area.

It is unknown where exactly the Red Deer Cave people fit into modern man’s family tree. Curnoe thinks that they may be related to some of the earliest members of Homo sapiens, which came about in Africa around 200,000 years ago and then crossed over into Asia, eventually coming to modern day China.

He believes it is much more likely, though, that they are a new and distinct evolutionary line that evolved in East Asia at the same time as Homo sapiens, much like Neanderthals. This idea is mostly due to the Red Deer Cave people looking vastly different from ancient African members of the human race.

Other researchers have offered their own different hypotheses. One likely theory, posited by Christ Stinger from the Natural History Museum in London, is that they are related to the Denisovan people, who are thought to have lived in Siberia and eastern Asia. It is known that the Denisovans mated with early Homo sapiens; the Red Deer Cave people could be the result of such a pairing.

Other information about the people suggests that they survived until recently, with their remains seemingly just 11,500 years old, meaning they outlasted their more famous brethren, the Neanderthals.

The question remains, though: were the Red Deer Cave people a new race, or merely a product of two races’ breeding? The first attempt at extracting good DNA from the bones ended in failure. More work is continuing now. Will they be successful? Curnoe says, “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Image Courtesy of  Patricia Hofmeester / Shutterstock.com

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