IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v396y1998i6711d10.1038_25027.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Did dinosaurs come up to scratch?

Author

Listed:
  • David M. Martill

    (School of Earth, Environmental and Physical Sciences, University of Portsmouth)

  • Paul G. Davis

    (School of Earth, Environmental and Physical Sciences, University of Portsmouth)

Abstract

The high specificity of bird ectoparasites has frequently been interpreted to mean that they have a long evolutionary history1. Either they were present as parasites before the main diversification of birds in the Cretaceous period2, or they evolved independently into avian parasites on several occasions. The recent discovery of dinosaurs with feathers3 suggests that birds may have inherited some of their ectoparasites from feathered theropod dinosaurs. We have now found microscopic egg-like structures on the surface of a fossil feather of approximately 120 million years old from the Crato Formation (Lower Cretaceous period) of northeast Brazil. They closely resemble the eggs of ectoparasitic feather mites and indicate an early origin for this specialized group of Acari.

Suggested Citation

  • David M. Martill & Paul G. Davis, 1998. "Did dinosaurs come up to scratch?," Nature, Nature, vol. 396(6711), pages 528-529, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:396:y:1998:i:6711:d:10.1038_25027
    DOI: 10.1038/25027
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/25027
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/25027?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:396:y:1998:i:6711:d:10.1038_25027. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.