WASHINGTON: While there is little doubt that many a Mesozoic mammal became a meal for a dinosaur, it may come as a surprise to learn that some mammals also dined on dinos. A dramatic fossil unearthed in northeastern China shows a pugnacious badger-like mammal in the act of attacking a plant-eating dinosaur
WASHINGTON: While there is little doubt that many a Mesozoic mammal became a meal for a dinosaur, it may come as a surprise to learn that some mammals also dined on dinos.
"Dinosaurs nearly always outsized their mammal contemporaries, so traditional belief has been that their interactions were unilateral - the bigger dinosaurs always ate the smaller mammals," said paleobiologist Jordan Mallon of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, who helped lead the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
"I think what's key here is that Mesozoic food webs were more complex than we had imagined," Mallon said. Examining the fossil was like a crime scene analysis. Repenomamus is perched atop the prone Psittacosaurus, gripping the jaw and hind leg while biting into the ribcage. Repenomamus measures 47cm long. Psittacosaurus is 120cm long. Both are thought to be not quite full adults.
The researchers discounted the idea that the Repenomamus and Psittacosaurus fossil showed a mammal merely scavenging a carcass. This illustration shows the Cretaceous carnivorous mammal Repenomamus robustus attacking the plant-eating dinosaur Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis moments before a volcanic debris flow buries them both about 125 million years ago in China.
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