{"id":28036,"date":"2023-07-19T09:29:35","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T13:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=28036"},"modified":"2023-07-19T09:29:35","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T13:29:35","slug":"small-mammal-preyed-on-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=28036","title":{"rendered":"Small mammal preyed on dinosaurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/science\/mammal-dinosaur-fossilized-pompeii-1.6909666<\/a><\/p>\n

Preserved animals provide rare direct glimpse into ancient interactions<\/h2>\n
\n
Thomson Reuters \u00b7 <\/span>
\n
\n
\"Two<\/div>
This fossil shows the entangled skeletons of the horned dinosaur, Psittacosaurus, and the badger-like mammal, Repenomamus robustus, just before death. The scale bar equals 10 centimetres. (Gang Han)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

A badger-like mammal died while chomping into the ribs of a hapless horned plant-eating dinosaur struggling to escape more than 100 million years ago. The pair were perfectly preserved, still locked in combat, in “China’s dinosaur Pompeii,”\u00a0researchers report.<\/p>\n

Dating to the Cretaceous Period, the dramatic fossil unearthed in northeastern China shows the\u00a0four-legged\u00a0mammal Repenomamus robustus\u00a0\u2014 the size of a domestic cat \u2014\u00a0ferociously entangled with the beaked two-legged dinosaur\u00a0Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis, as big as a medium-sized dog.<\/p>\n

Scientists suspect they were suddenly engulfed in a volcanic\u00a0mudflow and buried alive during mortal combat.<\/p>\n

“Dinosaurs nearly always outsized their mammal\u00a0contemporaries, so traditional belief has been that their\u00a0interactions were unilateral \u2014\u00a0the bigger dinosaurs always ate\u00a0the smaller mammals,” said paleobiologist Jordan Mallon of the\u00a0Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, who helped lead the study\u00a0published in the journal Scientific Reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Here, we have good evidence for a smaller mammal preying on\u00a0a larger dinosaur, which is not something we would have guessed\u00a0without this fossil,” Mallon said.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"A<\/div>
An illustration shows what the two skeletons would have looked
\nlike at their moment of death, 125 million years ago, based on the fossils. (Michael Skrepnick)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

READ MORE: https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/science\/mammal-dinosaur-fossilized-pompeii-1.6909666<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/science\/mammal-dinosaur-fossilized-pompeii-1.6909666 Preserved animals provide rare direct glimpse into ancient interactions Thomson Reuters \u00b7 Posted: Jul 18, 2023 1:26 PM EDT | Last Updated: July 18 This fossil shows the entangled skeletons of the horned dinosaur, Psittacosaurus, and the badger-like mammal, Repenomamus robustus, just before death. The scale bar equals 10 centimetres. (Gang Han) A badger-like … Continue reading Small mammal preyed on dinosaurs<\/span> →<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-28036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dinosaurs-and-company"],"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\/28036","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=28036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28037,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036\/revisions\/28037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}