19-07-2023, 08:41 AM
BY MADDIE BURAKOFF
Published 11:11 PM GMT+8, July 18, 2023
NEW YORK (AP) — An unusual find in China suggests some early mammals may have hunted dinosaur for dinner.
The fossil shows a badgerlike creature chomping down on a small, beaked dinosaur, their skeletons intertwined.
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The fossil, described Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, shows two creatures from around 125 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
Even though the mammal is much smaller, researchers think it was attacking the dinosaur when they both got caught in the volcanic flow, said study author Jordan Mallon, a paleobiologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature. The mammal is perched on the dinosaur, its paws gripping the reptile’s jaw and a hind limb while its teeth plunge into the ribcage.
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That mammals ate dinosaur meat had been proposed before: another fossil showed a mammal died with dinosaur remains in its gut. But the new find also suggests that mammals may have actually preyed on dinosaurs several times their size, and didn’t just scavenge ones that were already dead
https://apnews.com/article/mammals-eatin...b03568c61c
Published 11:11 PM GMT+8, July 18, 2023
NEW YORK (AP) — An unusual find in China suggests some early mammals may have hunted dinosaur for dinner.
The fossil shows a badgerlike creature chomping down on a small, beaked dinosaur, their skeletons intertwined.
......
The fossil, described Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, shows two creatures from around 125 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
Even though the mammal is much smaller, researchers think it was attacking the dinosaur when they both got caught in the volcanic flow, said study author Jordan Mallon, a paleobiologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature. The mammal is perched on the dinosaur, its paws gripping the reptile’s jaw and a hind limb while its teeth plunge into the ribcage.
......
That mammals ate dinosaur meat had been proposed before: another fossil showed a mammal died with dinosaur remains in its gut. But the new find also suggests that mammals may have actually preyed on dinosaurs several times their size, and didn’t just scavenge ones that were already dead
https://apnews.com/article/mammals-eatin...b03568c61c