Hungry for Dino Meat.

• Autores: Charles Q. Choi
• Localización: Scientific American, ISSN 0036-8733, Vol. 292, Nº. 2, 2005, págs. 18-19
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The article looks at research regarding a mammal, Repenomamus robustus, that preyed on dinosaurs. Newfound fossils reveal a baby dinosaur inside a mammal's gut--the first direct evidence of such predation. An international team based its conclusions on a species called Repenomamus robustus, a mammal that lived during the Mesozoic, 130 million or so years ago. Among the other dog-size, shrewlike species dug up by local farmers in the Yixian formation of northeast China, where caches of fossilized feathered dinosaurs are common, researchers discovered R. giganticus. Although the team of Jin Meng, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, which includes colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, cannot exclude the possibility that the Repenoma family was a clan of scavengers, Meng argues that its large, pointed teeth and jaws were good for catching, holding and rending other animals--abilities more indicative of a predator than a scavenger. INSET: STAYING SMALL.