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This Jurassic Park science is now a reality

Researchers say they can use the talents of pesky blood-sucking mosquitoes to their benefit

Julia Musto in New York
Post-hurricane mosquito problems

In the 1993 blockbuster film Jurassic Park, scientists brought dinosaurs back into existence by extracting their DNA from blood sucked by mosquitoes that had been frozen in amber.

“A hundred million years ago, there were mosquitoes, just like today,” said a narrating John Hammond, the park’s owner, who actor Richard Attenborough played. “And, just like today, they fed on the blood of animals - even dinosaurs.”

Now, researchers in Florida say they’ve done something similar.

Over the course of eight months, the University of Florida team identified the DNA of 86 different species of animals from blood sucked by tens of thousands of Florida mosquitoes.

“Using mosquitoes, we captured vertebrates that ranged from the smallest frogs to the largest animals like deer and cows,” Dr. Lawrence Reeves, an entomologist at the school, explained in a statement. “And animals with very diverse life histories: arboreal, migratory, resident, amphibious, and those that are native, invasive or endangered.”