TICKS: OLDER THAN DIRT?

Well, not really.  BUT ticks have been around for about 397 million years... give or take 23 million years.

QUOTE- "Our estimates indicate that the orders and classes of  spiders, scorpions, mites, and ticks diversified in the late Paleozoic, much earlier than previously reported from fossil date estimates. The divergence time estimated for ticks suggests that their first land hosts could have been amphibians rather than reptiles.  Using molecular data, we separated the spider-scorpion clades and estimated their divergence times at 397 +/- 23 million years ago."

Exp Appl Acarol. 2009 Jan;47(1):1- 18. Epub 2008 Oct 18. 
Jeyaprakash A, Hoy MA.
Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of Florida,
Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. ajey@ifas.ufl. edu

Comments

[Freethinker]

"Ill-favored ticks, are the foulest and nastiest creatures that be."

-PLINY THE ELDER (23-79 A.D.), Natural History

[Bev Feldman]

Thanks for that, Freethinker!!