i knew i hated mosquitos

just read this pretty sweet article about the extinction of dinosaurs. According to the article biting and disease carrying insects may have played a large role in the extinction of dinosaurs. Recent studies have shown that an influx in flowering plants and insects that would pollinate them matches up with the time period of the extinction of dinosaurs better than the idea of asteroids hitting. This growth of flowering plants may have also depleted the amount of fern like plants that dinosaurs were thought to have thrived on. heres an exerpt that sums up the article pretty well.

"In dinosaur feces, we found nematodes, trematodes and even protozoa that could have caused dysentery and other abdominal disturbances. The infective stages of these intestinal parasites are carried by filth-visiting insects."
In the Late Cretaceous, Poinar said, the world was covered with warm-temperate to tropical areas that swarmed with blood-sucking insects carrying leishmania, malaria, intestinal parasites, arboviruses and other pathogens, and caused repeated epidemics that slowly-but-surely wore down dinosaur populations. Ticks, mites, lice and biting flies would have tormented and weakened them.
"Smaller and separated populations of dinosaurs could have been repeatedly wiped out, just like when bird malaria was introduced into Hawaii, it killed off many of the honeycreepers," Poinar said. "After many millions of years of evolution, mammals, birds and reptiles have evolved some resistance to these diseases. But back in the Cretaceous, these diseases were new and invasive, and vertebrates had little or no natural or acquired immunity to them. Massive outbreaks causing death and localized extinctions would have occurred."

dinosaur extinction article