"Scientists who study why species vanish are increasingly looking for ancient DNA. They find it easily enough in the movies; remember the mosquito blood in Jurassic Park that contained dinosaur DNA from the bug's last bite? But in real life, scientists haven't turned up multi-million-year-old DNA in any useable form."

"Fortunately, a team at the Smithsonian Institution has now found something unique in a 46-million-year-old, fossilized mosquito — not DNA, but the chemical remains of the insect's last bloody meal."

"They started with a fossilized mosquito. If you think it's incredibly rare for a dinosaur to die and get fossilized for millions of years, imagine what it's like for a bug. Dale Greenwalt has. 'Everything has to go exactly right to become fossilized,' the retired biochemist explains."