Dinosaur feathers are nothing new, except for the effect of keeping warm, showing off their bodies, and flying, they don’t have anything delicious at all. But recently, paleontologists have discovered a species of bugs in amber, especially they eat dinosaur feathers.
Myanmar is one of the regions with the largest amber reserves in the world. The amber from the Hukang River Valley in northern Myanmar (Burma) can be traced back to the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago. Especially the amber here has high hardness and possesses many impurities stored in it, so it can be said that amber has also become a new field for paleontologists.
Chinese paleontologists have found ancient insects, snakes, ancient birds and even dinosaur tails in fossil Burmese amber. Thanks to the special preservative properties of amber, these fossils have retained their original shape after 100 million years. 
One of the dinosaur feathers discovered in the amber piece was damaged by chewing and the markings are similar to the feathers of modern birds with parasitic lice. Feather is one of the types of “special impurities” preserved in Burmese amber, including neck feathers and insect feathers. Not long ago, two pieces of feathered amber from Myanmar attracted paleontologists because through microscopic observations, the researchers noticed some ancient bugs in the feathers. Although these bugs are small and hard to see, paleontologists have found that they have unique and striking habits. 
The newly discovered insect is named Mesophthirus engeli, revealing the early makeup of the lice ancestor. Mesophthirus engeli has no wings and a body similar to a lice. The team found that they chewed very vigorously through the marks of a dinosaur’s fur. A team of researchers from the Capital Education University of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Capital Medical Science University, the National Museum of Natural History, and the Russian Academy of Sciences studied the studies. Small insects preserved in amber and discovered this particular beetle. Archaeologists have named this tiny insect Mesophthirus engeli with the genus “Mesophthirus” from the Greek word and the name “engeli” is dedicated to Michael S. Engel, a famous paleontologist. Americans, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the study of ancient insects. 
The earliest appearing fur-eating insect was thought to be Megamenopon rasnitsyni. The lice fossils were unearthed in Germany 44 million years ago, according to Chungkun Shih, study author at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History. Researchers also found evidence of Jurassic and Cretaceous parasitic parasites 66 to 201 million years ago. This ancient bug was very small with a length of less than 0.2 mm, so researchers had to use an electron microscope to see its shape. Mesophthirus engeli looks very much like today’s lice, but it has a larger head with black dot-like eyes on the sides and two tentacles with three long spines on top of the head. Mesophthirus engeli can be said to possess a body “three rings as one”, with the head, chest and abdomen equally wide, six feet short, with claws and long spines at the end, can be grasped. 
This finding suggests that the insect’s feathering behavior has originated at least in the mid Cretaceous period. 
Although it looks like a lice, the Mesophthirus engeli species is far different from modern lice and lice. Hence, paleontologists established a new ancient taxon of insects – Mesophagous caterpillars. Compared with the body, the mouth of Mesophthirus engeli is very large and strong, two large jaws are serrated, capable of chewing very strongly. 
In addition, the researchers also found that in the amber pieces containing these ancient bugs all had the presence of feathers and they all existed signs of damage: broken niches formed near the body. feathers and feathers are also broken. The marks of damaged feathers resemble those left by a feather-eating bug after chewing on the feathers. And obviously, the culprit of these traces was none other than the Mesophthirus engeli species. 
The origin and early evolution of the hairy trait in insects is inherently ambiguous due to the lack of records of Mesozoic fossils – the period of tectonic, climatic and progressive activities. chemical. Blood-sucking insects were found during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, but dinosaur fur-eating insects have not been previously reported. 
The discovery of this ancient feather-eating beetle is of great significance, because it has pushed the history of feather-eating insects to 55 million years, because before the discovery of this beetle, the earliest feather-eating insect. is known to mankind in the Kainozoic era 44 million years ago. Thus, the discovery of Mesophthirus engeli filled the gap in the early evolution of a feather-eating insect. Mesophthirus engeli lived in the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, this is also an important period of diversity and differentiation of primitive birds and feathered dinosaurs, it can be said that this is also the setting stage. parasitic relationship between feathering insects and their host. 
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