The study of a remarkably preserved fossil led to a stunning scientific discovery.
125 million years ago, a dinosaur was attacked by a mammal three times its size when their positions were frozen by the ash of a volcanic eruption.
The study of a remarkably preserved fossil led to a stunning scientific discovery.
125 million years ago, a dinosaur was attacked by a mammal three times its size when their positions were frozen by the ash of a volcanic eruption.
Who said the little ones can’t beat the big ones? This is stated by several scientists in an article in a British scientific journal. Scientific reports how their study of a very well-preserved fossil discovered in China in 2012 led them to a stunning discovery. This makes it possible to distinguish a badger-sized mammal that has sunk its sharp fangs into the dinosaur’s ribs. However, until now, scientists considered mammals too small to attack dinosaurs in the few tens of millions of years when they communicated.
The mammal is three times smaller than the attacked dinosaur
Discovering a fossil frozen in the ash of a volcanic eruption,i couldn’t believe my eyes“, recalls paleontologist Jordan Mallon, one of the researchers responsible for the study. For him, this is now proof that”there were at least a few fire mammals around the Cretaceous that could bring down an adult dinosaur“. In this case, the mammal in question was a herbivore, four meters tall and endowed with a beak similar to that of a parrot. The dinosaur it attacked was three times its size.
But wouldn’t this mammal use the carcass of an already dead dinosaur? For researchers, this hypothesis is wrong: the way the two skeletons are intertwined shows that the mammal did not feed on a dinosaur carcass, according to Jordan Mallon. “The dinosaur collapsed and pinned the mammal’s hind leg at the bend of its knees.“Indicative of a mammalian attack,” notes the paleontologist. In addition, there are no other bite marks on the dinosaur that would be characteristic of those left by an animal that has eaten carrion.
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This discovery echoes the findings of another fossil found in 2005. It showed that a small dinosaur ended up in the stomach of a mammal of the same species as the Chinese fossil, suggesting that the mammals may well have attacked the dinosaurs. . This fight scene analyzed today confirms that this hypothesis was the correct way to understand how these two categories of living beings evolved on Earth millions of years ago. The find will be exhibited at the Elementary School Museum in the Chinese city of Weihai.
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