Cientistas chineses identificam ‘bizarro’ encontrar como worldilitis primeiro parasita verme fóssil

DescobertaHenrique Iury
Cientistas chineses identificam ‘bizarro’ encontrar como worldilitis primeiro parasita verme fóssil
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O tentáculo fossilizado é semelhante às tênias marinhas modernas e ficou preso em âmbar há cerca de 99 milhões de anos no norte de MianmarOs vermes parasitas são encontrados em todos os principais vertebrados, mas seus tecidos moles significam que raramente são preservados no registro geológico.

Nearly 100 million years ago, a shark or ray infected with an ancient tapeworm became stranded on the shore of what is now known as Myanmar. As a dinosaur feasted on the marine creature, it ripped apart the parasite, flinging it into the resin of a nearby tree.
That is the best guess of a scientific team from China, Myanmar, Germany and Britain, led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who puzzled over the “bizarre fossil” trapped in Cretaceous amber in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state.

The find is “the first body fossil of a tapeworm”, according to Wang Bo, a professor with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, in a CAS statement.


Parasitic worms infect all major vertebrates in the world, but have left few traces, partly as a result of living inside another animal’s intestine.

They are also “rarely preserved in the geological record,” due to their lack of bones or exoskeletons, the team said in a paper published by the peer-reviewed journal Geology on March 22.

The Myanmar tapeworm could provide a glimpse into the ancient history of the parasitic worm and open up opportunities to examine soft-bodied organisms often lost in the fossil record, the researchers said.

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