The first dinosaur that had eaten a mammal was discovered – It is Microraptor – See photos

An international team of paleontologists has announced that they have discovered the first known case of a dinosaur having been eaten by a mammal.

The fossil is of a small winged dinosaur named Microraptor, which lived in the ancient forests of present-day China during the Early Cretaceous Period about 120 million years ago. The dinosaur in question was about the size of a crow or a cat, and although it walked mainly on two legs, it probably also flew on its long wings from tree to tree hunting small animals.

Although the fossil had been discovered since 2000, scientists only now noticed that inside it was a second smaller fossil of a separate animal, namely the foot of an ancient mammal. The leg has been preserved almost complete and belonged to an animal about the size of a mouse. Analysis of its bones showed that it lived mainly on the ground.

The researchers from Britain, Canada, the US and China, led by Dr David Hone of Queen Mary University of London, made the relevant publication in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology “Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology”.

Other fossils of Microraptor have been found in the past that contained a bird, a lizard and a fish in their stomachs, and now a mammal is being added to the list of its prey, indicating that this little dinosaur ate everything.

“It’s so rare to find examples of food inside dinosaurs, so any such find is really important as it gives us direct evidence of what they ate. Although the mammal in question was certainly not an ancestor of man, we can assume that some of our ancient relatives were a meal for the hungry dinosaurs. Our study reveals a fascinating moment in history—the first discovery of a mammal-eating dinosaur—even if it’s not as terrifying as Jurassic Park,” said Hawn.

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