What Bugged the Dinosaurs?: Insects, Disease, and Death in the Cretaceous (EPUB)

English | ISBN: 0691124310 | 2008 | EPUB | 280 pages | 26 MB

George Poinar Jr., Roberta Poinar, "What Bugged the Dinosaurs: Insects, Disease, and Death in the Cretaceous"

Millions of years ago in the Cretaceous period, the mighty Tyrannosaurus rexwith its dagger-like teeth for tearing its prey to ribbonswas undoubtedly the fiercest carnivore to roam the Earth. Yet as What Bugged the Dinosaurs reveals, T. rex was not the only killer. George and Roberta Poinar show how insectsfrom biting sand flies to disease-causing parasitesdominated life on the planet and played a significant role in the life and death of the dinosaurs.

The Poinars bring the age of the dinosaurs marvelously to life. Analyzing exotic insects fossilized in Cretaceous amber at three major deposits in Lebanon, Burma, and Canada, they reconstruct the complex ecology of a hostile prehistoric world inhabited by voracious swarms of insects. The Poinars draw upon tantalizing new evidence from their amazing discoveries of disease-producing vertebrate pathogens in Cretaceous blood-sucking flies, as well as intestinal worms and protozoa found in fossilized dinosaur excrement, to provide a unique view of how insects infected with malaria, leishmania, and other pathogens, together with intestinal parasites, could have devastated dinosaur populations.

A scientific adventure story from the authors whose research inspired Jurassic Park, What Bugged the Dinosaurs offers compelling evidence of how insects directly and indirectly contributed to the dinosaurs’ demise.