Half-billion-year-old parasite still threatens shellfish
A new study has unexpectedly discovered that a common parasite of modern oysters actually started infecting bivalves hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs went extinct.
Rare fossils show worms survived multiple mass extinction events. The research, published in iScience, used high-resolution 3D scans to look inside 480-million-year-old shells from a Moroccan site known for its exceptionally well-preserved sea life.
The scans revealed a series of distinctive patterns etched both on the surface of the fossils and hidden inside them.
“The marks weren’t random scratches,” said Karma Nanglu, a UC Riverside paleobiologist who led the research. “We saw seven or eight of these perfect question mark shapes on each shell fossil. That’s a pattern.
Author's summary: Ancient parasite infects shellfish for millions of years.
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