Early mammals: not just dino bait

All of us mammals can stand a little taller today:

When the dinosaurs ruled the world, the mammals hid in the shadows, daring to grow no bigger than shrew-like insectivores that hunted at night. Or so we thought.

Two stunning new fossils from China have overturned this preconception. Not only did large mammals live alongside their giant reptilian cousins, but some were big and bold enough to go dinosaur hunting.

Named Repenomamus giganticus and Repenomamus robustus, the sturdily built mammals lived in China about 130 million years ago, around 65 million years before we thought their kind inherited the Earth. At 1 metre long, R. giganticus was big enough to hunt small dinosaurs, and a newly discovered fossil of its smaller cousin, R. robustus, died with its belly full of young dinosaur.

AND MORE here:

Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York unveiled the fossil of a mammal, found in Northeast China, with a baby dinosaur in its stomach.

The mammal was comparable in size and shape to a Tasmanian devil or a small dog, while the dinosaur was just a few inches long.

"The biggest surprise in this find is mammals eating dinosaurs," said Meng Jin, associate curator in the Division of Paleontology at the museum . . . "that means that dinosaurs are edible, and maybe tasty."

Posted by David on January 13, 2005 8:18 AM