A 44-Million-Year-Old Hitchhiker

from ScienceNOW Daily News
November 8, 2011

Talk about a ride gone wrong. A tiny mite climbed onto a spider’s back at least 44 million years ago, but the spider stumbled into a glob of sticky tree sap. That makes the duo the oldest known fossil evidence of hitch-hiking behavior, or phoresy, in a large group of mites called the Astigmata.

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