Fossil shows mammal biting into dinosaur: ‘It turns everything upside down’ | Science

Chinese and Canadian researchers have a fossil found recording a mammal biting a dinosaur. This is unique, scientists say, because it was previously thought that dinosaurs had little to fear from mammals.

The fossil was discovered in 2012 in the coastal Chinese province of Liaoning, in an area known as the Pompeii of the dinosaurs. The two skeletons were found almost complete. In the eleven years since discovery, the fossil, around 100 to 125 million years old, has been determined to be real.

“The two animals fight together, intimately bonded. This is one of the first pieces of evidence showing a mammal exhibiting predatory behavior towards a dinosaur,” said researcher Jordan Mallon of the Canadian Museum of Nature. CNN.

It is a mammal the size of a domestic cat. With today’s knowledge you wouldn’t think it was a great hunter, but at that time the animal was one of the largest mammals. The fossil shows the animal biting a young psittacosaurus – a herbivorous dinosaur.

“We’ve always been taught that the bigger dinosaurs ate the smaller mammals. That turns everything upside down. It shows that mammals could prey on bigger dinosaurs if they were hungry and desperate enough,” Mallon says.