Not Transylvania, but the Rocks of the Grand Cayon: Prehistoric Vampire Fossils Unearthed

Vampires? Yes. Count Dracula? No. These vampires were so small you would have needed a good microscope to spot them. Like Count Dracula, they were terrifying, at least for the other tiny microbes which lived with them, more than 750 million years ago in the ancient primeval seas. These little monsters were amoebas, the same microscopic critters which can be seen in pond water collected from a lake, except that these guys would attack prehistoric algae or bacteria and suck their cellular innards out. We know from the fossil record that amoebas (or at least their other protozoa relatives), appeared 1.8 billion years ago, when our planet's so-far story was more than half over. These vampires lived during the Proterozoic Eon in Earth's history, when animals or plants of any kind had yet to appear in the seas.

So how do we know that the microscopic critters ever existed in the ancient oceans. Unfortunately, we have no direct fossils of their remains, but luckily we have a way. Surprise! These critters still live in ponds and lakes today. AIEEEE!! The amoeba genus Vampyrella pendula eats the innards of its cousins, like its ancient relative. Scientists proved the existence of ancient vampire amoebas by matching bite marks found on bacterial fossils from Precambrian rocks the Grand Canyon (see image below), with the modern-day bite marks of the modern day micro-monsters.