Researchers claim to have found few ancient tapeworm eggs in a 270-million-year-old fossilized shark poop. They believe that these parasites might have plagued animals for much longer than was previously estimated by the experts.

According to the details provided about the tapeworms, the tapeworms usually cling towards the inner walls of the intestines of vertebrates i. e. creatures that have backbones like fish, pigs, cows and humans. These parasites when reach adulthood, they unleash their eggs on the world via the feces of their hosts, reveal studies.

Earlier it was thought not at all easy to investigate about the early history of such parasites of vertebrates because the fossils of such parasites date back to the age of dinosaurs or before but the researchers found out one way to unearth such fossils i. e. by analyzing coprolites or their fossilized dung.

The latest discovery by a team of experts is taking about a spiral-shaped coprolite from a shark, which has been found holding up a cluster of 93 oval tapeworm eggs, one of which, even contains a probable developing larva with a cluster of fiber-like objects that experts doubt, might have been the beginnings of hooklets that were used to attach to a host's intestines as adults.