Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are killed annually by malaria and other diseases spread through the bite of mosquitoes, insects that date back to the age of dinosaurs. All of these bites are inflicted by females, which possess specialized mouth anatomy that their male counterparts lack.
But it hasn’t always been that way.
Researchers said they have discovered the oldest-known fossils of mosquitoes — two males entombed in pieces of amber dating to 130 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, and found near the town of Hammana in Lebanon.
To their surprise, the male mosquitoes possessed elongated piercing-sucking mouth parts now seen only
