Like it was straight out of Michael Crichton's novel "Jurassic Park," scientists discovered a fossil of an ancient mosquito whose belly was full of blood from some creature.

The Associated Press reported the fossil was found among someone's 30-year-old collection of rocks. But retired biochemist Dale Greenwalt recognized the tiny mosquito fossilized in a piece of shale, unlike the "Jurassic Park" bug, which was encapsulated in amber.

But similar to the mosquito of the novel-turned-film, Greenwalt's discovery was full of blood from some ancient creature. The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It's following Crichton's script in that we're using a blood engorged fossil mosquito and in this case we're using the direct descendent of the dinosaurs, given that we're 20 million years late," Greenwalt, who still collects and analyzes fossils for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., said.

Anyone looking for a real-life dinosaur cloning experiment will be disappointed. This mosquito existed long after dinosaurs were extinct and likely drew its last meal of blood from a descendant, like a bird. Greenwalt also stated several scientists have accepted that DNA from other creatures cannot survive through insect fossils.

With two different types of light-refracting X-rays, the team of scientists determined it was blood in the mosquito's belly from high levels of iron. When compared to the iron present in the rest of the bug's body and a in a modern mosquito, the high concentration in the stomach was proven to be from sucking the blood from another creature.

"It was exciting," Greenwalt told KAWC, "and everyone was jumping up and down because we knew this was exceedingly rare and important."

He said the team's research is important because the technique used chemicals to turn up clues in ancient life. The research was also made possible by using sophisticated and extremely rare equipment from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

"We have fossil insects that are bright yellow, bright red [and] bright orange... probably a whole array of different types of pigments," Greenwalt said. "I've got the next ten years of my life all planned out working at the museum."