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      parasitised feathered dinosaurs as revealed by Cretaceous amber assemblages

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          Abstract

          Ticks are currently among the most prevalent blood-feeding ectoparasites, but their feeding habits and hosts in deep time have long remained speculative. Here, we report direct and indirect evidence in 99 million-year-old Cretaceous amber showing that hard ticks and ticks of the extinct new family Deinocrotonidae fed on blood from feathered dinosaurs, non-avialan or avialan excluding crown-group birds. A † Cornupalpatum burmanicum hard tick is entangled in a pennaceous feather. Two deinocrotonids described as † Deinocroton draculi gen. et sp. nov. have specialised setae from dermestid beetle larvae (hastisetae) attached to their bodies, likely indicating cohabitation in a feathered dinosaur nest. A third conspecific specimen is blood-engorged, its anatomical features suggesting that deinocrotonids fed rapidly to engorgement and had multiple gonotrophic cycles. These findings provide insight into early tick evolution and ecology, and shed light on poorly known arthropod–vertebrate interactions and potential disease transmission during the Mesozoic.

          Abstract

          Fossils of ticks are rare, and little is known about their ancient hosts. Here, Peñalver and colleagues describe ticks in Cretaceous amber, including representatives of the new family Deinocrotonidae, which are associated with a dinosaur feather and nest biota.

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          Development and evolutionary origin of feathers.

          Avian feathers are a complex evolutionary novelty characterized by structural diversity and hierarchical development. Here, I propose a functionally neutral model of the origin and evolutionary diversification of bird feathers based on the hierarchical details of feather development. I propose that feathers originated with the evolution of the first feather follicle-a cylindrical epidermal invagination around the base of a dermal papilla. A transition series of follicle and feather morphologies is hypothesized to have evolved through a series of stages of increasing complexity in follicle structure and follicular developmental mechanisms. Follicular evolution proceeded with the origin of the undifferentiated collar (stage I), barb ridges (stage II), helical displacement of barb ridges, barbule plates, and the new barb locus (stage III), differentiation of pennulae of distal and proximal barbules (stage IV), and diversification of barbule structure and the new barb locus position (stage V). The model predicts that the first feather was an undifferentiated cylinder (stage I), which was followed by a tuft of unbranched barbs (stage II). Subsequently, with the origin of the rachis and barbules, the bipinnate feather evolved (stage III), followed then by the pennaceous feather with a closed vane (stage IV) and other structural diversity (stages Va-f). The model is used to evaluate the developmental plausibility of proposed functional theories of the origin of feathers. Early feathers (stages I, II) could have functioned in communication, defense, thermal insulation, or water repellency. Feathers could not have had an aerodynamic function until after bipinnate, closed pennaceous feathers (stage IV) had evolved. The morphology of the integumental structures of the coelurisaurian theropod dinosaurs Sinosauropteryx and Beipiaosaurus are congruent with the model's predictions of the form of early feathers (stage I or II). Additional research is required to examine whether these fossil integumental structures developed from follicles and are homologous with avian feathers. J. Exp. Zool. (Mol. Dev. Evol.) 285:291-306, 1999. Copyright 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
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            Evolution of ticks.

            Evolutionary patterns in ticks have traditionally been cast in terms of host associations. Largely untested assumptions of cospeciation and observations of current host associations are used to estimate the age of different taxa. Several recent phylogenetic studies of supraspecific relationships in ticks, based on both morphological and DNA-sequence data, allow the first rigorous testing of these assumptions. Reanalysis of patterns of tick-host associations suggests that the perception of host specificity in ticks may be an artifact of incomplete sampling. An analysis of tick-host and -habitat associations and biogeographical patterns, in the context of the newly derived phylogenies, suggests that much of the existing host-association patterns may be explained as artifacts of biogeography and ecological specificity.
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              A Feathered Dinosaur Tail with Primitive Plumage Trapped in Mid-Cretaceous Amber.

              In the two decades since the discovery of feathered dinosaurs [1-3], the range of plumage known from non-avialan theropods has expanded significantly, confirming several features predicted by developmentally informed models of feather evolution [4-10]. However, three-dimensional feather morphology and evolutionary patterns remain difficult to interpret, due to compression in sedimentary rocks [9, 11]. Recent discoveries in Cretaceous amber from Canada, France, Japan, Lebanon, Myanmar, and the United States [12-18] reveal much finer levels of structural detail, but taxonomic placement is uncertain because plumage is rarely associated with identifiable skeletal material [14]. Here we describe the feathered tail of a non-avialan theropod preserved in mid-Cretaceous (∼99 Ma) amber from Kachin State, Myanmar [17], with plumage structure that directly informs the evolutionary developmental pathway of feathers. This specimen provides an opportunity to document pristine feathers in direct association with a putative juvenile coelurosaur, preserving fine morphological details, including the spatial arrangement of follicles and feathers on the body, and micrometer-scale features of the plumage. Many feathers exhibit a short, slender rachis with alternating barbs and a uniform series of contiguous barbules, supporting the developmental hypothesis that barbs already possessed barbules when they fused to form the rachis [19]. Beneath the feathers, carbonized soft tissues offer a glimpse of preservational potential and history for the inclusion; abundant Fe2+ suggests that vestiges of primary hemoglobin and ferritin remain trapped within the tail. The new finding highlights the unique preservation potential of amber for understanding the morphology and evolution of coelurosaurian integumentary structures.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                e.penalver@igme.es
                ricardo.perez-de-lafuente@oum.ox.ac.uk
                Journal
                Nat Commun
                Nat Commun
                Nature Communications
                Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
                2041-1723
                12 December 2017
                12 December 2017
                2017
                : 8
                : 1924
                Affiliations
                [1 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1767 8176, GRID grid.421265.6, Museo Geominero, , Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, ; 28003 Madrid, Spain
                [2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2157 7667, GRID grid.4795.f, Departamento de Zoología y Antropología Física, , Facultad de Biología, Universidad Complutense, ; 28040 Madrid, Spain
                [3 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1937 0247, GRID grid.5841.8, Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra i de l’Oceà and Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), , Facultat de Ciències de la Terra, Universitat de Barcelona, ; 08028 Barcelona, Spain
                [4 ]ISNI 0000 0001 1957 9153, GRID grid.9612.c, Departament de Ciències Agràries i del Medi Natural, , Universitat Jaume I, ; 12071 Castelló de la Plana, Spain
                [5 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2152 1081, GRID grid.241963.b, Division of Invertebrate Zoology, , American Museum of Natural History, ; New York, NY 10021 USA
                [6 ]Independent Researcher, Moon Township, USA
                [7 ]GRID grid.440504.1, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, ; Oxford, OX1 3PW UK
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8312-6087
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2233-5480
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4074-7400
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6239-7352
                Article
                1550
                10.1038/s41467-017-01550-z
                5727220
                29233973
                9966aef0-32b3-463a-b1d0-a2a5119d617d
                © The Author(s) 2017

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 19 June 2017
                : 27 September 2017
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