Scientists have made a Jurassic Park-like discovery after possibly finding dinosaur blood inside a piece of amber that is almost 100 million years old.
The incredible find echoes Steven Spielberg's cult hit based around dinosaurs being resurrected from DNA extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber.
The 'Dracula' tick had bloated to eight times it size with what is believed to be dinosaur blood.
This tick and two others trapped together in a third amber piece were assigned to a new extinct group named Deinocroton draculi - which translates as "Dracula's terrible tick".
Inside another ancient piece of Burmese amber researchers found a tick still gripping a dinosaur feather after 99 million years.
The scientists behind the new discovery stress that all attempts to remove DNA from such ancient amber specimens have failed due to deterioration of the complex molecule over time - dashing hopes the blood-filled tick could lead to the creation of a walking dinosaur.
Dr Ricardo Perez-de-la-Fuente, a member of the international team from Oxford University, said: "The fossil record tells us that feathers like the one we have studied were already present on a wide range of theropod dinosaurs, a group which included ground-running forms without flying ability, as well as bird-like dinosaurs capable of powered flight.
"So although we can't be sure what kind of dinosaur the tick was feeding on, the mid-Cretaceous age of the Burmese amber confirms that the feather certainly did not belong to a modern bird, as these appeared much later in theropod evolution according to current fossil and molecular evidence."
The prehistoric ticks look very similar in appearance to modern versions of the blood suckers, which are eight-legged arachnids related to spiders.
The scientists, whose findings are reported in the journal Nature Communications, were not able to identify the host animal whose blood was found in the bloated tick - but indirect evidence points to it being a dinosaur.
Hair-like structures, known as setae, from the larvae of skin beetles were found attached to the two other Deinocroton ticks that were preserved together.
Today, skin beetles feed on shed feathers, skin and hair from birds and mammals. Since no mammal hairs have yet been found in Cretaceous amber, the assumption is that the D. draculi ticks had been feeding on feathered dinosaurs.
"The simultaneous entrapment of two external parasites - the ticks - is extraordinary, and can be best explained if they had a nest-inhabiting ecology as some modern ticks do, living in the host's nest or in their own nest nearby," said co-author Dr David Grimaldi, from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Amber, often used in jewellery, is fossilised tree resin, the oldest dating back more than 300 million years.
A plethora of ancient insects, spiders, worms, frogs, hair, feathers, wood, fruit and flowers have been found trapped and preserved in amber from the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
In Jurassic paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are among a select group chosen to tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA.
While the park's mastermind, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt.