Parasites have roamed the Earth for a long time. They were here before the dinosaurs: The oldest fossils are more than 500 million years old. Today on the show, Regina G. Barber speaks with paleontologists Karma Nanglu and Danielle de Carle about a mysterious fossil called the “Riddler,” and the oldest-ever leech fossil. They share stories of the enduring power of parasitism through the ages and why the clues to prehistoric mysteries may be tucked in a basement.Interested in more science behind rare fossils? Email us your question at [email protected] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Parasites scare me. I think of cordyceps, the parasitic fungus that inspired the video game-turned-TV series The Last of Us, the one that in real life bursts out of the head of ants and controls them when they're dead. Or I think of people finding a tapeworm in their bodies after eating raw meat. Those have haunted me since childhood.
And even more unsettling, I was reminded recently by a paleontologist that parasites have been around a lot longer than I had thought.
We have fossils as old as about 515, 516 million years old that have evidence of parasites on them. And these are kind of small, worm-like animals building tubes on top of these shelled creatures called brachiopods in order to basically steal the food that they're drawing into their mouths.
Carmen Nenglu's that paleontologist. He's at the University of California, Riverside, and he says trying to trace how far back parasites popped up is hard work. They're rare to find in fossils. Among other things, they tend to be made of only soft tissue that doesn't preserve well in rock. Sometimes researchers get clues that only give a small portion of the whole mystery.
And like the world's greatest detective, Batman, karma had to deal with a mysterious character. But in this case, it was a fossil that nobody could figure out.
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