It turns out bedbugs are older than bats - a mammal that people had previously believed to be their first host 50-60 million years ago. Bedbugs in fact evolved around 50 million years earlier, a recent study suggests.Work by an international team of scientists, including the University of Sheffield, compared the DNA of dozens of bedbug species in order to understand the evolutionary relationships within the group as well as their relationship with humans.Bedbugs rank high among the list of most unwanted human bedfellows but until now, little was known about when they first originated.Experts have now discovered that the evolutionary history of bed bugs is far more complex than previously thought and the critters were actually in existence during the time of dinosaurs. More research is needed to find out what their host was at that time, although current understanding suggests it's unlikely they fed on the blood of dinosaurs.This is because bed bugs and all their relatives feed on ...
