No “Eocene Park”, but Still Cool

Modern mosquito chows down

A rare mosquito fossil: “the first blood-filled ancient [46 million years old] fossilized mosquito ever found” http://bit.ly/19C1zHx .  Using mass spectrometry, scientists detected “organic compounds present in hemoglobin, a protein found in blood.”  The results are being published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Unfortunately, current technology can’t pick out DNA from fossils that old. (“The mosquito is from the Eocene epoch, lasting from 56 to 33.9 million years ago – about 19 million years after dinosaurs went extinct”), so no Eocene Park.