Posted on 05/16/2019 6:18:07 PM PDT by ETL
A new study, published in Current Biology on Thursday, found that bedbugs have been around for 100 million years — significantly longer than scientists had previously believed.
“To think that the pests that live in our beds today evolved more than 100 million years ago and were walking the Earth side by side with dinosaurs was a revelation.
It shows that the evolutionary history of bed bugs is far more complex than we previously thought,” Professor Mike Siva-Jothy from the University of Sheffield, who participated in the study, said in a news release.
Dr. Steffen Roth from the University Museum Bergen in Norway, who led the study, said scientists had previously believed bats were the very first hosts of bedbugs. However, bats only evolved 50 to 60 million years ago.
“It was also unexpected to see that evolutionary older bedbugs were already specialized on a single host type, even though we don't know what the host was at the time when T. rex walked the earth,” Roth said.
According to the study, scientists believe it is unlikely the parasites fed on the dinosaurs because bedbugs usually feed on animals with “homes” — such as a bird’s nest or a human’s bed — which dinosaurs didn’t have.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It would have been better if the bedbugs became extinct.
What were they called then?
What were they called then?
*ping*
They had Motel 6’s back then? Did they leave the torch on?
R”Roar!!!” Which translated means “I’d rather become extinct than live with these bedbugs biting me all night.”
Did they try mating?
(In honor of Tim Conway I watched the ‘elephant story’ sketch from the Carol Burnett show for the umpteenth time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qqE_WmagjY )
The bed was yet to be invented. Lol
The invention of the bed saved them from extinction. 8>)
I KNEW there would be a picture of a dinosaur on this thread!!
Am I just spending WAY too much time here to know that ahead of time?? :)
Maybe that’s what made the T-Rex so nasty?
Did they try mating?
hehe, I remember that joke.
A common European and African cockroach may have gotten its evolutionary start in North America, according to new fossil findings.
More than 70 species of cockroaches in the genus Ectobius currently crawl through Europe and Africa, making them amongst the most common cockroaches in that part of the world.
They measure only about 0.25 to 0.5 inches long (6.35 to 12.7 millimeters), considerably smaller than the American cockroaches (Periplaneta Americana) that can grow to about 1.5 in. long (4 centimeters) and plague major cities and small towns across the United States.
Researchers have previously thought that Ectobius first evolved in Europe and Africa, scuttling around the region since at least 44 million years ago, based on a specimen preserved in Baltic amber of this age.
Now, researchers based at the Slovak Academy of Sciences have discovered 49-million-year-old fossils of four different Ectobius species in northwest Colorado, pushing back the insects’ first appearance on Earth by roughly 5 million years and its place of origin as modern-day United States rather than the Old World.
[In Photos: Ancient Life Trapped in Amber]
https://www.livescience.com/42351-european-cockroach-fossils.html
Bedrock-a-sauruses
How come bedbugs didn’t keep evolving, and aren’t driving flying cars now?
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