Re: disease-carrying varmints biting dinos

[Tim Williams <tijawi@gmail.com>]

Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au> wrote:

> There's always *Cymothoa exigua*, the tongue-eating louse.


Yes, there is no shortage of parasitic crustaceans in today's world -
and many of them are pretty gruesome in their habits, e.g.,
http://bogleech.com/bio-paracrust.html.   There is no doubt that
parasitic crustaceans were prevalent in the Mesozoic as well.  One
group of crustaceans, the worm-like Pentastomida, is actually
specialized for parasitizing vertebrates (especially terrestrial
reptiles) and has been around since the Cambrian (when they maybe
parasitized basal craniates or conodonts?).