Mammals May Have Hunted Down Dinosaurs For Dinner, Rare Fossil Suggests

NEW YORK (AP) — An uncommon discover in China suggests some early mammals could have hunted dinosaur for dinner.

The fossil exhibits a badgerlike creature chomping down on a small, beaked dinosaur, their skeletons intertwined. The discover comes from a web site generally known as “China’s Pompeii,” the place mud and particles from long-ago volcanoes buried creatures of their tracks.

“It does appear to be it is a prehistoric hunt, captured in stone, like a freeze body,” College of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte, who was not concerned with the examine, stated in an electronic mail.

The fossil, described Tuesday within the journal Scientific Stories, exhibits two creatures from round 125 million years in the past, through the Cretaceous interval.

Regardless that the mammal is way smaller, researchers assume it was attacking the dinosaur after they each received caught within the volcanic stream, stated examine creator Jordan Mallon, a paleobiologist on the Canadian Museum of Nature. The mammal is perched on the dinosaur, its paws gripping the reptile’s jaw and a hind limb whereas its tooth plunge into the ribcage.

“I’ve by no means seen a fossil like this earlier than,” Mallon stated.

That mammals ate dinosaur meat had been proposed earlier than: one other fossil confirmed a mammal died with dinosaur stays in its intestine. However the brand new discover additionally means that mammals could have truly preyed on dinosaurs a number of instances their measurement, and didn’t simply scavenge ones that had been already useless, Mallon stated.

“This turns the outdated story on its head,” Brusatte stated. “We’re used to pondering of the Age of Dinosaurs as a time when dinosaurs dominated the world, and the tiny mammals cowered within the shadows.”

The examine authors acknowledged that there have been some fossil forgeries recognized from this a part of the world, which Mallon stated was a priority after they began their analysis. However after doing their very own preparations of the skeletons and analyzing the rock samples, he stated they had been assured that the fossil — which was discovered by a farmer in 2012 — was real, and would welcome different scientists to check the fossil as nicely.

The mammal within the fossil duo is the meat-eating Repenomamus robustus, in regards to the measurement of a home cat, Mallon stated. The dinosaur — Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis — was about as large as a medium-sized canine with a parrotlike beak.

This species was a plant eater, however different dinosaurs had been meat eaters or ate each. Ultimately, dinosaurs had been in all probability nonetheless consuming mammals extra typically than the opposite manner round, Mallon stated.

“And but we now know that the mammals had been capable of combat again, at the very least at instances,” he stated.

The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives assist from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Academic Media Group. The AP is solely answerable for all content material.