500-Million-Year-Old Parasite Threatens Shellfish
A recent study has made a surprising discovery about a common parasite of modern oysters, finding that it began infecting bivalves hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs became extinct.
Researchers used high-resolution 3D scans to examine 480-million-year-old shells from a Moroccan site, revealing distinctive patterns etched on the surface and inside the fossils.
"The marks weren’t random scratches," said Karma Nanglu, a UC Riverside paleobiologist. "We saw seven or eight of these perfect question mark shapes on each shell fossil. That’s a pattern.
The study, published in iScience, shows that the parasite has survived multiple mass extinction events.
Author's summary: Ancient parasite still affects shellfish today.
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