A mammal eats a dinosaur
Repenomamus is found with a juvenile Psittacosaurus in its stomach — and later, locked in combat with one.
- When
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Cretaceous, Mesozoic
The badger-sized Repenomamus overturns the assumption that Mesozoic mammals were uniformly tiny insectivores hiding under the feet of dinosaurs. One specimen preserves the dismembered remains of a juvenile Psittacosaurus in its gut cavity, direct evidence of a mammal eating a dinosaur. A later find from the same formation captures a Repenomamus gripping a larger Psittacosaurus, apparently attacking rather than scavenging, buried mid-struggle. Mammals in the Cretaceous were a smaller part of the ecosystem than they would become, but they were not merely prey.