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Mammal 1 Dinosaur 0

Loomis

14:53 / 13.01.05

Scientists have found the remains of a dinosaur in a fossilised mammal's stomach, a discovery that overturns decades of scientific belief about the relationship between dinosaurs and mammals.

All Acting Regiment

20:06 / 13.01.05

"A team led by scientists from the American Museum of Natural History in New York discovered bones of a beaked, two-legged dinosaur in the stomach of a cat-sized animal that died about 130 million years ago in China's north-eastern Liaoning region. It also unearthed the remains of the largest primitive mammal ever found, a creature that most closely resembles the Tasmanian devil."

This is certainly interesting- and kinda logical. I mean I thought it was fairly well known that there were cat sized mammals around at the time, and cats eat birds, and small dinosaurs are um birds kinda. But it's not as if the mammals were taking down sauropods.

SiliconDream

06:42 / 14.01.05

I'm sure the mammals were influencing dinosaurs' evolution anyway. Even the little ones must have been significant egg predators...look at what rats do to modern ground-nesting birds.

sleazenation

09:12 / 16.01.05

This is the kind of sensationalist reporting on paleontology that I loathe. It leaps to massive conclusions without any real evidence. To say that a cat sized mammal might have had an impact on the evolution of the dinosaurs based on this find is akin to saying that Great White Sharks were influential on the evolution of humans based on evidence that such sharks sometimes eat humans.

To put it another way - this isn't so much mammals 1 - Dinosaurs 0 as it's Mammals 1 - Dinosaurs 166 (million years approx) as the dominant life form on earth...

All Acting Regiment

19:39 / 16.01.05

"This is the kind of sensationalist reporting on paleontology that I loathe"

Good point. But in a related way it's also sensational the way that people always seem to focus on the big players of the ecosystem rather than the small (but equally important)stuff like egg eating mammals and the like, no?

I quite agree. If we kept an eye on the smaller end of the ecosystem, we'd be forced to conclude that beetles are the most sucessful order of animals on earth seeing as they account for around a fifth of all known animals on the planet...

Andek Niemand

09:51 / 17.01.05

Sleazenation, I don't know whether you meant that as a joke, but I actually agree. This is an ants' world; we are just visiting it. I mean, they discovered architecture, agriculture, animal husbandry and tons of other stuff what, 150 million years ago? And when we'll be gone, they will still stay here, ruling the planet as they have so long ruled, building cities, having wars and so on.

sleazenation

13:37 / 17.01.05

Not really a joke at all - about a third of all animals known today are insects (a group which includes both ants and beetles). There are all sorts of ways of measuring the 'success' of various groups of animals. its place in the food chain is one of them, but it is neither the only one nor is it even the most important...

sleazenation

13:38 / 17.01.05

or rather 'nor is it necessarily the most important'...

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