Mammals Eating Dinosaurs
Tuesday, 16. June 2009, 15:03:33
The Mesozoic Era from about 251 - 65 million years ago was the age of the dinosaurs. After their extinction the mammals took over. But the story is, as usual, not as simple as that. Although the dinosaurs dominated in the Mesozoic, the first mammals actually turned up only about 10 million years later than the first dinosaurs.
Repenomamus was an opossum-sized mammal about 1 m long and weighing around 14-15 kg living around 130 million years ago.
In China a fossil of Repenomamus robustus was discovered a few years ago with the remains of a juvenile psittacosaur in its stomach area. This fossil is a direct evidence that some primitive mammals fed on small vertebrates, including young dinosaurs.
Repenomamus giganticus was of similar size as Repenomamus robustus but a little bit larger, and thereby the largest mammal known from the Cretaceous (circa 145.5 ± 4 to 65.5 ± 0.3 million years ago).
The dinosaur-eating mammal fossil was found in the Liaoning Fossil Beds in China, sometimes called a Mesozoic Pompeii. Consisting of layers of volcanic and sedimentary rock, the Yixian Formation in China's Liaoning Province has yielded an enormous variety of fossil fish, birds, insects, reptiles, shrimp, flowers, mammals, and dinosaurs dating back to the late Jurassic (the Jurassic period extends from about 199.6± 0.6 to 145.5± 4 million years ago) and early Cretaceous periods-more than 128 million years ago. At that time, the region was dotted with freshwater lakes, streams, rivers, and volcanoes. Volcanic explosions rained fine ash into the lakes, and animals that died or fell into the water were quickly buried in the fine-grained sediment at the bottom where they were preserved with remarkable detail.
Both illustrations are from Wikipedia.
• http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7022/full/nature03102.html
• http://www.amnh.org/science/papers/mesozoic_mammal.php
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4165973.stm
Repenomamus was an opossum-sized mammal about 1 m long and weighing around 14-15 kg living around 130 million years ago.
In China a fossil of Repenomamus robustus was discovered a few years ago with the remains of a juvenile psittacosaur in its stomach area. This fossil is a direct evidence that some primitive mammals fed on small vertebrates, including young dinosaurs.
Repenomamus giganticus was of similar size as Repenomamus robustus but a little bit larger, and thereby the largest mammal known from the Cretaceous (circa 145.5 ± 4 to 65.5 ± 0.3 million years ago).
The dinosaur-eating mammal fossil was found in the Liaoning Fossil Beds in China, sometimes called a Mesozoic Pompeii. Consisting of layers of volcanic and sedimentary rock, the Yixian Formation in China's Liaoning Province has yielded an enormous variety of fossil fish, birds, insects, reptiles, shrimp, flowers, mammals, and dinosaurs dating back to the late Jurassic (the Jurassic period extends from about 199.6± 0.6 to 145.5± 4 million years ago) and early Cretaceous periods-more than 128 million years ago. At that time, the region was dotted with freshwater lakes, streams, rivers, and volcanoes. Volcanic explosions rained fine ash into the lakes, and animals that died or fell into the water were quickly buried in the fine-grained sediment at the bottom where they were preserved with remarkable detail.
Both illustrations are from Wikipedia.
• http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7022/full/nature03102.html
• http://www.amnh.org/science/papers/mesozoic_mammal.php
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4165973.stm
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