Did dinosaurs have lice Researchers say it’s possible

CHAMPAIGN, lll. A new study louses up a popular theory of animal evolution and opens up the possibility that dinosaurs were early - perhaps even the first - animal hosts of lice. The study, in Biology Letters, uses fossils and molecular data to track the evolution of lice and their hosts. It offers strong evidence, the researchers said, that the ancestors of lice that today feed on birds and mammals began to diversify before a mass extinction event killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. "This study lends support to the idea that major groups of birds and mammals were around before the dinosaurs went extinct," said Kevin Johnson, an ornithologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois and a principal investigator on the study. "If the lice were around, we know their hosts were probably around." Scientists still are trying to understand the factors that led to the diversity of today's birds and mammals. One theory is that the extinction of the dinosaurs fostered the earliest stages of bird and mammal diversification and expansion (a process called "radiation") by opening vast new territories and types of habitats to them.