2023-07-19 13:15:52
The meticulous study of fossil remains from about 125 million years ago reveals an amazing and dramatic scene that was immortalized for posterity: a primitive carnivorous mammal served as a predator against a herbivorous dinosaur.
The research is the work of a team consisting of, among others, Gang Han of Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology in China and Jordan Mallon of the Canadian Museum of Nature.
“The two animals are locked in mortal combat, intimately intertwined, and it’s one of the first pieces of evidence demonstrating actual mammalian predatory behavior on a dinosaur,” Mallon explains.
These fossil remains call into question the belief that dinosaurs were hardly threatened by mammals of their time during the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs were the dominant animals on the planet.
In the fossil remains analyzed, the dinosaur is a Psittacosaurus, about the size of a large dog. Psittacosaurs, herbivorous beasts, are among the earliest known horned dinosaurs, living in Asia during the Late Cretaceous, between 125 and 105 million years ago. The mammal of the fossilized animal pair is a badger-like animal, called Repenomamus robustus. Although not large compared to dinosaurs, it was one of the largest mammals in the Cretaceous, a time when mammals did not yet rule the Earth.
Artistic recreation of a moment of combat between the two extinct beasts. The Repenomamus robustus attacks the Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis moments before both are buried by the violent arrival of material caused by the eruption of a nearby volcano. (Illustration: Michael Skrepnick)
The coexistence of these two animals is not new, but what is new to science is the predatory behavior they display, as Mallon points out.
The fossil was collected in the Chinese province of Liaoning in 2012, and both skeletons are almost complete. Their integrity is due to the fact that they come from the area of the Liujitun paleontological sites. That fossil-rich area has been dubbed “China’s Dinosaur Pompeii.”
The name refers to the many fossils of dinosaurs, small mammals, lizards and amphibians in the area, animals that were suddenly buried by mudslides and debris after one or more volcanic eruptions.
The study is titled “An extraordinary fossil captures the struggle for existence during the Mesozoic”. And it has been published in the academic journal Scientific Reports. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
#dinosaur #prey #mammal #predator