Scientists say that the 2cm-long parasites, which roamed the planet between the Middle Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous, were up to four times larger than their descendants - the fleas we see today.
Nine perfectly preserved fossils were unearthed from 165-million-year-old Jurassic deposits in Daohugou, northeast China, and the 125-million-year-old Cretaceous strata at Huangbanjigou, China.
The female fleas were a huge 20mm in length, while the slightly smaller males still measured in at 15mm.
The biggest fleas to be found today have a maximum length of 5mm.
While they didn’t have wings and weren’t able to jump, their remains show how they were specially adapted to the feed off their prey, said the study published in the ‘Nature’ journal.
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