Kind: captions
Language: en
a newly unveiled fossil over a hundred
million years old appears to show a
weasel-like mammal locked in Mortal
Kombat with a dinosaur three times its
size it's pretty amazing thing to look
at it's the first example that I know of
of preserving a mammal and a dinosaur
engaging uh in that way this is not like
you know the Mesozoic equivalent of a
bunny rabbit or a squirrel this is the
Mesozoic equivalent of like a Tasmanian
devil if anything could take out a
dinosaur bigger than it this species
could this new evidence suggests that
mammals and dinosaurs may have had a
much more complex predator-prey
relationship than previously thought
challenging conventional Notions of
dinosaur dominance over mammals one of
the questions that comes up is what was
this mammal thinking typically Predators
attack animals their own size or smaller
but it's not unprecedented for mammals
to go after larger animals even today
the study authors are convinced that in
this case the mammal attacked the
dinosaur while it was alive the fact
that the hind foot of the mammal is
actually trapped beneath the folded hind
leg of the dinosaur it looks for all the
world like the dinosaur collapsed on top
of the mammal trapping its hind foot and
that we don't think could happen if the
dinosaur was already dead still longrich
isn't ruling out the possibility that
the mammal is Scavenging on an already
dead dinosaur I think Scavenging I find
a plausible explanation look these
animals have been dead for 120 25
million years
uh what's going on there we have limited
evidence seems like if you're fighting a
struggling dinosaur you don't want to
stick your hand in his mouth so is it
Scavenging is it predation I I think
both are possible it's very hard to say
definitively uh it's a bit of a mystery
the two animals were likely Frozen in
time and impeccably preserved by a
volcanic mudslide in what is now
northeastern China where the fossil was
found the fossil is a rare look at a
complete skeleton of a dinosaur and a
near complete skeleton of the mammal
it's pretty rare to find something
that's like nose to tail or knows the
most the tail complete is pretty
exceptional but unfortunately fossil
forgeries are not uncommon so
researchers took measures including
analyzing sediment in the fossil and
from where it was found to verify its
authenticity most of the fossil
forgeries to come out of China are
fairly simple juxtapositions of you know
one animal maybe next to another or one
fossil next to another or one on top of
the other in the case of of
our fossil the two skeletons are are
well intertwined so we feel pretty
confident that uh in our in our findings
it seems if I was you know if I was a
fossil collector over there and I dug up
a complete dinosaur like that I'd
probably just sell it I wouldn't wait
until I found a mammal and then glue it
on top it's like I just like okay I just
won the lottery at this complete
dinosaur and like you wouldn't you
wouldn't say okay let's hold on let's
see if you can win the lottery again and
uh get a complete meal I can stick on
top of it still there is limited
evidence of mammal dinosaur interactions
in the fossil record and researchers say
more is needed before drawing definitive
conclusions I think this is something
we're gonna be arguing about for a while
it might not be the last paper that's
how science advances one argument at a
time
[Music]