A layman will have to look closely, but for the connoisseurs it is certain what took place more than a hundred million years ago. “A repenomamus, a kind of badger-like mammal the size of a large cat, attacked a much larger psittacosaurus. And it seemed to succeed,” says Gijs Rademaker, who made a series and a podcast about dinosaurs with Maarten van Rossem.
It took a huge amount of chance to capture this moment, he says. “It’s a live moment that you actually see trapped in stone. The moment such an attack takes place, something has happened. Think of a volcanic eruption or a mudslide.”
Petrified in battle
“The mudflow overtook them,” says Rob van den Berg, paleontologist at Naturalis. “You can see the mammal biting into the dinosaur’s chest, it literally has some ribs in its mouth. And while they were fighting they were covered in mud that eventually turned to stone.”
The rare find changes what we thought we knew about dinosaurs, according to Van den Berg. “The general picture is that dinosaurs were absolute rulers and that mammals did not have much to say, but that is not correct. We have known for some time that mammals preyed on young or weak dinosaurs.”
“But that you find such a beautiful fossil in which this agony can be seen,” continues Van den Berg. “That makes it special. A fossil with two different animals in action with each other, there are only a few of them in the world.”
Well preserved
According to the paleontologist, China is the Mecca for researchers because the conditions for fossilization are very favorable there. But unique finds are also made in our country.
Van den Berg: “In the Netherlands we also have valuable fossils from the dinosaur era or even older, old footprints for example. You don’t see anything of the animal itself, but you do know that it once walked in the area.” Such a print may be less tangible, but it is of great value to science. “Everything we know about past life, we know through fossils.”
2023-07-21 15:01:47
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