Traces of red blood cells from a primate were found in a fossilized tick. This discovery could prove useful to better fight against malaria.
Paleoentomologist George Poinar, a researcher at the University of Oregon, has just made a surprising discovery, to say the least. The latter found traces of red blood cells in a fossilized tick that probably came from a primate about 30 million years old.
It was while traveling to a mountain range in the Dominican Republic that the scientist made this astonishing discovery. He found a tick locked in a piece of amber. Intrigued, he decided to take it with him and study it under a microscope in his laboratory. A detailed report of his analyzes has been published in the Medical Journal of Entomology.
Presence of babesia microti
Thanks to this tick, George Poinar was able to study in detail the composition of the red blood cells that his body contained. Microscopic analysis revealed the presence of babesia microti parasites, bacteria known to spread babesiosis, an infection similar to malaria, which affects not only human cells but also simian cells, i.e. cells relating to monkeys.
The scientist therefore concluded that the tick was feeding on the blood of a primate but that it would have been interrupted in the middle of a feast by being torn off by a second primate, which would undoubtedly have propelled it into the resin. of a tree. Trapped, the tick would therefore have fossilized in the resin which, over time, turned into amber.
Better understand certain parasitic diseases
The interest of such a discovery? Better understand the pathologies of infectious origin that are still rife today, such as malaria, but also piroplasmosis, a parasitic disease that mainly affects dogs. Because, as the paleontomologist points out, “the forms of life found trapped in amber can reveal to us a lot of things about the history and evolution of the diseases facing which we still have to fight today.”
“This parasite, for example, was clearly already present millions of years before humans and seems to have evolved alongside primates, among other hosts,” says George Poinar.
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