Scientists Find Dinosaur-eating Mammal

These early mammals were predators, feeding on young psittacosaurs (picture)

Chinese scientist have found a fossilized mammal which ate dinosaurs. This conflicts with previous assumations that they ate insects and not dinosaurs. Their stomack contents show they ate young dinosaurs called psittacosaurs.


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Related news sources:
BBC: Fierce mammal ate dinos for lunch




[edit on 2005/1/13 by Hellmutt]

Thay looka lot like the didelphodons and except of course, these are a whole lot larger.You think the have any relation?

well of course if their were mamels patroling the times of dinosaurs (which there were) but they dident tackel huge dinos, i mean cmon. But for sure they were eating them unless u belive that dinosaurs were warm blodded....then my therory sucks.....but anyway mamels are as we all know warmn blooded right? well a course.....but where dinos cold blooded....maybe and if they were the mamels would probably eat them well night was on because the dinos would be in their sleep mode......reptillian night mode u know when their like in a comma.....do the mamels would most likely just eat them well they were sleeping.....and their young

What does this finding have to do with whether dinosaurs were endothermic or exothermic? Cats are able to eat mice and both are endotherms.

And many reptiles are Nocturnal too. Back to the drawing board freind!

but if the dinosaurs were reptililian they have to rest at night and listen im the kinda guy who dosent know much abiut science....i shoot first ask questions later........but dont reptiles like rest at night....and get get uo in the middle of the night to take a piss...lil joke.....but ya if they were reptillian they couldent get up because of reptiles cold blood and the tempature around them....so the mamels would just eat them well their in their a comma mode but when day arises.....LOOK OUT MAMELS A THEROPOD AT IT LOOKS MIGHTY PISSED!!!!

Many people now believe that dinosaurs were warm blooded (endothermic) like mammals.

Thats assuming they were ectothermic (cold blooded) even so, unless it was freezing at night ectothermic reptiles would not nessesarily be helpless. There are current schools of thought that dinosaurs may have been endothermic (warm blooded) creatures, more like birds than reptiles, its thought birds are a direct evolutionary branch.
Your theory may well be right, but then reptiles hunt sleeping mammals too, so perhaps it was like that then aswell. Remember that every animal is prey for another so they develop behavious for predator evasion, or they quickly become extinct, Is this what your suggesting happened to the dinosaurs, their young were preyed on till they became extinct? just incidently Mammals may still have eaten small dinos even if they were warm blooded, infact, I might suggest being warm blooded might mean better predator evasion by small dinos given they would not need to bask to maintain a body temprature at which they could move fast.
This is a very intresting subject. I wonder weather a huge herbivor dino (the biggest) would maintain PBT preferred body temp if it was ectothermic?
Or would its sheer bulk mean its pbt would be more stable?

[edit on 013131p://11011 by instar]

this is becoming an interesting diiscusiion this is what i suspect ended the reign of the dinos in the first place.....if u know about biology ud know that 65 million years ago a huge eevnt caused the extinction of the dinos. now if it were a metoer the dust would have blocked out the sun...so basicly the mammels would have eatin the slower moving dinos...

I still think it more logical that the bigger dinos simply lost their food supply as other dinos died out, than a bunch of bears gang-banged a T-Rex, hehe...

Still, an interesting little item...not surprising though, my cat eats lizards all the time...

still ya gotta think if rexy is awake when those damn bears attack well....lets just saw that the rex will be eating bear paw cookies lol...

Ok, but if you block out the sun for a great time, all plant matter dies, so mammals should have died out too, since the entire food chain is disrupted no?

mamels bak then were mostly carnivores and the sun wasent completly blocked out so that the world would be in gulphed in darkness....and plus the mamels were mostly carnivores and would just have surivied of both each other and the dead dinos that scateered the land....

Yes, and guess what´s on the menu after the next big global event disaster? Lots of water everywhere. You better start getting used to eat a lot of fish...

Totall darkness is not nessesary to prevent photosynthesis /plant growth.
no plants, no plant eaters, no plant eaters, no carnivors. A dead dino decays quickly, dont forget an event like the Asteroid impact would throw up a huge amount of debris into the atmosphere, this didnt last just a few days or weeks, it would have been months atleast perhaps a year or two.
These carnivorous mammals would have eaten themselves out of food altogether by then, no? Not to mention a huge number of decaying bodies of all kinds, might spread disease quickly?
news.bbc.co.uk...
Theres also this to consider...
dsc.discovery.com...

[edit on 023131p://43012 by instar]

Depends on the event, ocean life may be devastated too. God I hate saefood, except shark Yum!

but cause a few years go by dont mean that mamels will not eat each other.....soon light would come back plannts would grow but yesyou are right the mamel population would dwindle....by alot but alot but just because those few reptiles or mamels survived is whats importent....just even like 4 species could create a whole new strain of evoulution and well....it did dident it even before the dinos when the world was inhabitated by a few species of single celled animals...

I can't say I really find any of this a particular surprise - the vast majority of modern mammals are omnivorous, it would seem unlikely that our ancient ancestors would be any different - and I'd say it's this one fact that makes us such a successful group. That this individual ate a little dino as it's last meal seems no more unlikely than if it'd been found with a belly full of beetles.

That we survived in the post asteroid world is going to be down to the fact that we ate everything, or at least had a go at eating everything - potentially including each other (hmm, although I guess moral ethics are quite hard to deduce from the fossil record).

Being endothermic would help [i[usas we could forage around a bit more consistently too, and would improve the geographical distribution, so we could exploit the margins a bit more. Fast eating would suggest a desire to not become prey yourself, which is always a bonus.

(The illustration looks scarily like one of my parents dogs, and she also eats everything that can be eaten, alive or dead. You can safely take it on trust that everything here - really does mean everything).