A rare fossil of a dining dinosaur is shedding new light on ancient ecosystems and behaviours.
“It’s one of the few things that really give you an idea of ecology and behaviour in the fossil record,” said University of Alberta paleontologist Corwin Sullivan, who describes what he and his colleagues found in the belly of a 120-million-year-old Microraptor Zhaoianus in a newly published paper.
Zhaoianus (pronounced zhay-OHN-us) was a crow-sized, birdlike dinosaur. Fully fledged but with a bony tail and a jaw full of sharp little teeth instead of a beak, it likely glided around the forests, swamps and lakeshores of the early Cretaceous era….