{"id":26066,"date":"2022-12-24T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2022-12-24T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=26066"},"modified":"2022-12-22T10:30:38","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T15:30:38","slug":"mammal-foot-found-in-fossilized-microraptor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=26066","title":{"rendered":"Mammal foot found in fossilized microraptor"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"deck\" lang=\"en\">Discovery important for reconstructing ancient food webs, scientist says<\/h2>\n<div class=\"byline\">\n<div class=\"bylineDetails\"><strong><span class=\"authorText\">Dennis Kovtun<\/span> <span class=\"bullet\"> \u00b7 <\/span>CBC News <span class=\"bullet\"> \u00b7 <\/span><\/strong><time class=\"timeStamp\" datetime=\"2022-12-22T06:08:14.620Z\"><strong>Posted: Dec 21, 2022<\/strong><br \/>\n<\/time><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"storyWrapper\">\n<figure class=\"imageMedia leadmedia-story full\">\n<div class=\"placeholder\">\n<div class=\"placeholderImage\"><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.6694625.1671670615!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.JPG_gen\/derivatives\/16x9_780\/mammal-foot.JPG\" alt=\"A brown\/grey fossil with bones. \" \/><\/div><figcaption class=\"image-caption\">Mammal foot among the ribs of microraptor (Photo by Hans Larson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div class=\"story\">\n<p>An international team of scientists have discovered new evidence of a dinosaur dining on ancient mammals.<\/p>\n<p>The foot of a tiny mammal was inside the stomach of a microraptor \u2014 a small feathered dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous some 100 million years ago in temperate forests in what is now China.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the first time a piece of a mammal was discovered inside a microraptor.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Looking at interactions between animals, that&#8217;s much easier to tell in the modern biology in living animals because we can actually go out and make those observations,&#8221; said Caleb Brown, a curator of dinosaur systematics and evolution at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alta.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Trying to make those inferences for fossils is more difficult because you don&#8217;t necessarily know exactly which animal ate which other animal, unless you have exceptional cases like this.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"imageMedia image full\">\n<div class=\"placeholder\">\n<div class=\"placeholderImage\"><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.6694619.1671670474!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_780\/dinosaur-food.jpg\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 300px,(max-width: 460px) 460px,(max-width: 620px) 620px,(max-width: 780px) 780px,(max-width: 1180px) 1180px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.6694619.1671670474!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_300\/dinosaur-food.jpg 300w,https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.6694619.1671670474!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_460\/dinosaur-food.jpg 460w,https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.6694619.1671670474!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/dinosaur-food.jpg 620w,https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.6694619.1671670474!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_780\/dinosaur-food.jpg 780w,https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.6694619.1671670474!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_1180\/dinosaur-food.jpg 1180w\" alt=\"Artistic drawing of a dinosaur with a mammal foot in its mouth. \" \/><\/div><figcaption class=\"image-caption\">Reconstruction of Microraptor eating the foot of a small mammal. (Artwork by Ralph Attanasia III)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>This find alone will not change understanding of Cretaceous ecosystems and how they evolved, said Corwin Sullivan, a professor in the department of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, who was involved in the new discovery.<\/p>\n<p>But the discovery will contribute to the accumulation of paleontological knowledge and allow to &#8220;build up a very general picture of how food webs functioned, to some degree, in the geological past, how these various species were behaving and interacting,&#8221; Sullivan said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s rare for a preserved fossil vertebrate to have any kind of gut contents, and certainly evidence of dinosaurs eating mammals is rare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>READ MORE<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/edmonton\/dino-dining-on-mammals-canadian-scientists-part-of-rare-discovery-revealing-diet-of-microraptors-1.6694610\">https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/edmonton\/dino-dining-on-mammals-canadian-scientists-part-of-rare-discovery-revealing-diet-of-microraptors-1.6694610<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Discovery important for reconstructing ancient food webs, scientist says Dennis Kovtun \u00b7 CBC News \u00b7 Posted: Dec 21, 2022 Mammal foot among the ribs of microraptor (Photo by Hans Larson) An international team of scientists have discovered new evidence of a dinosaur dining on ancient mammals. The foot of a tiny mammal was inside the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=26066\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mammal foot found in fossilized microraptor<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":645,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1651],"tags":[79,1695],"class_list":["post-26066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dinosaurs-and-company","tag-dinosaurs","tag-microraptor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26066"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26068,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26066\/revisions\/26068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}