The fossil was found in 2012 in the Chinese coastal province of Liaoning, in an area known as the Pompeii of dinosaurs. Both skeletons were found almost complete. In the eleven years since the find, the fossil, which is between 100 and 125 million years old, has been determined to be genuine.
“The two animals fight together, intimately intertwined. It’s some of the first evidence to show that a mammal exhibits predatory behavior toward a dinosaur,” said researcher Jordan Mallon of the Canadian Museum of Nature. CNN.
It is a mammal the size of a domestic cat. With current knowledge one would not think that 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 learned that the biggest dinosaurs ate the smallest mammals. This turns everything upside down. It shows that mammals could take on the biggest dinosaurs if they were hungry and desperate enough,” says Mallon.
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