'giant' mammal ate dinos! (dinosaur, Article)

[painted wolf]

Ok, so giant in this case means between the size of a badger and a small dog, but it was a predator of dinosaurs... babys and small aduts anyway.

The two new species of mammal hail from China. They are named Repenomamus giganticus and Repenomamus robustus. What makes them interesting is that at 1 metre long giganticus was big enough to tackle small adult dinosaurs and robustus was found with several baby dinos in its stomach.

Clearly the comptetition between dinosaurs and mammals was more heated than origionally thought.

Both are members of a group of odd critters called Triconodonts that have no living decendants. They were one of the casualties of the K/T extintion that also clamed the dinosaurs, if they made it that long.

wa:do

[No*s]

Ah neat. Are there any artistic representations online you know of PW?

[painted wolf]

yup, I wasn't able to get this link up before, the page was acting buggy.
This is the article from the Nature web site. It has a picture of one of the skeletons and an artists reconstruction.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/0501...050110-11.html

wa:do

[Scuba Pete]

Way cool! Thanks for sharing. However, anything that was capable of eating a dinosaur gives me the willies! I am glad they are extinct (megladons and velociraptors too).

[No*s]

Thanks PW. I will have a look. I just have to wonder if they'd make good BBQ .

[painted wolf]

hmm... well dinos I'd guess would taste like chicken

I guess the others would taste like rabbit (which tastes a bit like chicken)

when in doubt say it tastes like chicken! Everything tastes like chicken

wa:do

[Darwin Redux]

Originally Posted by NetDoc

Way cool! Thanks for sharing. However, anything that was capable of eating a dinosaur gives me the willies! I am glad they are extinct (megladons and velociraptors too).

Don't be too frightened - it only ate very little dinosaurs - hatchlings etc...

[fromthe heart]

That skeleton looked similar to the wild boars...cool article though. Wonder how many more different kinds are out there waiting to be found? I find it odd that there is such a great number of skeletons here in the U.S. and Canada. Wyoming and Alaska in particular.

[Sunstone]

I wonder what kind of social behavior they were capable of? Did they hunt in packs?

[No*s]

Originally Posted by painted wolf

hmm... well dinos I'd guess would taste like chicken

I guess the others would taste like rabbit (which tastes a bit like chicken)

when in doubt say it tastes like chicken! Everything tastes like chicken

wa:do

You know that it's because the machines couldn't figure out what chicken tastes like...