Copyright bbc
The new discovery shows this mosquito larva does in fact share features with current day mosquitoes, which makes it more interesting. Zoologist André Amaral from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich was part of the study. He said: "This fossil is unique, because the larva is very similar to modern species - in contrast to all other fossil discoveries of mosquitoes from this period." The researchers say this study seems to show that mosquitoes had already diversified and changed in the Jurassic period, and that the "shape and structure of their larvae has remained remarkably similar for almost 100 million years". "This new fossil indicates that extinct forms of mosquitoes coexisted with modern ones during the Cretaceous [period]" they added.
