Is This The Earliest Evidence of a Dinosaur Being Eaten By a Mammal?

Amaze Lab

When dinosaurs walked the Earth our planet was a much different and no doubt scarier place. While one might imagine a giant t-rex stomping around and eating everything in sight, experts now say that this fossil had shed some light on one of the cretaceous periods' fiercest predators.

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00:00When dinosaurs walked the Earth, our planet was a much different and no doubt scarier

00:08place.

00:09And while one might imagine a giant T-Rex stomping around and eating everything in sight,

00:13experts now say that this fossil has shed some light on one of the Cretaceous period's

00:17fiercest predators.

00:18This fossil includes not only a skeleton of another predator, one that was fossilized

00:22during mortal combat with another, but also one that's called Repenomimus Robustus,

00:27which science alert likens to essentially a prehistoric opossum.

00:30The creature lived between 125 and 101 million years ago in what is now Asia.

00:36Experts say they were aware this creature might have attacked dinosaurs that were much

00:39smaller than itself, but this shows it likely went after much larger prey.

00:43Not only that, but this is also some of the earliest evidence showing a mammal preying

00:47on a dinosaur.

00:48That's because when mammals first began roaming the planet, they were very small.

00:52Most of them were closer to the size of something like a modern day rat or shrew.

00:55A far cry from other modern day varieties like elephants that actually rival the size

01:00of dinosaurs.

01:01In fact, here is an artist's rendition of what this ancient opossum might have looked

01:04like after downing its much larger prey before molten rock from a volcano overtook them.

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