Insect Attack

[tara]

Insect Attack May Have Finished Off Dinosaurs

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0103090702.htm

"We found in the gut of one biting insect, preserved in amber from that era, the pathogen that causes leishmania -- a serious disease still today, one that can infect both reptiles and humans. In another biting insect, we discovered organisms that cause malaria, a type that infects birds and lizards today.

"In dinosaur feces, we found nematodes, trematodes and even protozoa that could have caused dysentery and other abdominal disturbances. The infective stages of these intestinal parasites are carried by filth-visiting insects."

In the Late Cretaceous, Poinar said, the world was covered with warm-temperate to tropical areas that swarmed with blood-sucking insects carrying leishmania, malaria, intestinal parasites, arboviruses and other pathogens, and caused repeated epidemics that slowly-but-surely wore down dinosaur populations. Ticks, mites, lice and biting flies would have tormented and weakened them.

Insects, not meteor, killed dinosaurs: study

….. fatal diseases including leishmaniasis and malaria, which have been extracted by scientists from the bodies of ancient insects, could hold the clue to the extinction of dinosaurs.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=342769