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The last moments of a Cretaceous lizard may have looked like this, because they were swallowed the head first by the dinosaur Microraptor zhaoianus.
Credit: Doyle Trankina
About 120 million years ago, a small dinosaur swallowed a lizard, swallowing all the reptile. The story of the little lizard may have ended here, but the dinosaur died soon after and has been preserved as a fossil. Millions of years later, paleontologists discovered the squamous meal in the dinosaur's belly.
Scientists found the lizard when they examined the fossil of a feathered dinosaur named Microraptor zhaoianus, a small carnivore from the early Cretaceous (145.5 to 65.5 million years ago) in the present northeast of China. In MicroraptorThe s abdomen was an almost complete skeleton that the researchers identified as a previously unknown lizard species.
This "exceptional specimen" paints a clearer picture of the animal diversity of this region during the Cretaceous, and it alludes to what was on the menu of dinosaur predators as Microraptor, scientists reported in a new study. [In Photos: Amber Preserves Cretaceous Lizards]
Microraptor belongs to the group of theropod dinosaurs (dromaeosaurids) – dinosaurs resembling small to medium sized birds – which also includes Velociraptor and Deinonychus. According to the study, he had flight feathers on the fore and hind limbs, and he was likely to slip or even fly.
The skeleton of the fossilized lizard was still whole and almost complete and seemed to belong to a young man. His position in the dinosaur's intestines showed that he was engulfed head first, "which accords with the feeding behavior of lizards and still-existing carnivorous birds," wrote the study's authors.
The new species of Cretaceous lizard was found in the abdomen of a Microraptor fossil (indicated by the white rectangle).
Credit: Jingmai O 'Connor
They nicknamed the ingested lizard Wangi Indrasaurus: The name of the species honors paleontologist Yuan Wang, director of the Paleozoological Museum of China, and Indrasaure refers to a legend of ancient Indian texts about the Indra deity, who was swallowed by a dragon.
Careful examination of the lizard's teeth revealed that they were widely spaced, short-crowned and almost square. They were different from the teeth of other Cretaceous lizards, and their unusual shape suggests that the lizard may have had a different diet from that of its close relatives, said study scientists.
Microraptor and its lizard lunch offer a rare glimpse of the direct interactions between predators and prey in ecosystems that have been missing for millions of years. They were found alongside others Microraptor Fossils that keep the remains of mammals, fish and birds in their belly, according to the study.
Using these and other fossils from more than two dozen animal groups, the researchers reconstructed a food web showing who was eating that in the Jehol biota; this site in Liaoning, China – where Microraptor was discovered in 2005 – contains a wide range of exceptionally preserved fossils dating from 133 million to 120 million years ago.
The findings were published online July 11 in the journal Current Biology.
Originally published on Science live.
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