In Parasitology a research team from Germany and South Africa, including Jason Dunlop for the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, describe a remarkable fossil tick from the Cretaceous Burmese amber of Myanmar. Khimaira fossus combines the body of a soft tick with the mouthparts of a hard tick. It has been placed in a new, extinct family and appears to represent a ‘missing link’ which belonged to a probably even more ancient group from which both the soft and hard ticks may have evolved.