Re: Early mammals ate dinosaurs

[Eric Allen <erallen@yahoo.com>]

Agreed,
though you still have the problem of being able to
definitavely match the lucky survivor's wounds to a
particular culprit.  

What I find interesting is that the _Repenomamus_
swallowed the psittacosaur without chewing it up.

So here's one for us all:  I was discussing the find
with a friend of mine after she saw it on the evening
news (who called the mammal a "tasmanian devil") and
she asked if the dinosaur was a hatchling or if the
mammal slurpped down a near-full term egg with the
dino inside.

Eric Allen
Undergraduate, TTU


--- Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Certainly.  But this could also apply to
> _Repenomamus_.  We don't know for 
> certain if the juvenile psittacosaur was alive or
> dead when the mammal came 
> up on it.
> 
> Ironically, the only time we know for sure that a
> long-extinct animal was a 
> predator (i.e., attacking live prey) is when the
> intended prey survives the 
> encounter, carrying injuries that subsequently heal
> imperfectly, leaving 
> proof of the attack.



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