In the 20 years since the movie Jurassic Park fantasized about how a vast array of dinosaurs could be cloned from blood found in ancient amber-trapped mosquitoes, fossil collectors have been on the hunt for a similar specimen. Over the years, a few different groups of scientists have claimed to find a fossilized mosquito with ancient blood trapped in its abdomen, but each of these teams’ discoveries, in turn, turned out to be the result of error or contamination.
Today, it was announced that we finally have such a specimen, a blood-engorged mosquito that’s been preserved in shale rock for around 46 million years in northwestern Montana. The most astounding thing about the discovery? It was made three decades ago by an amateur fossil hunter—a geology graduate student named Kurt Constenius—then left to sit in a basement, and only recognized recently by a retired biochemist named Dale Greenwalt who’s been working to collect fossils in the Western U.S. for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History...
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