MMMMM, DINOSAUR...

Throwing evolutionary assumptions on their head is the recent discover of dinosaur eating mammals:

Two newly discovered fossils show that this lowly image of early mammals, long the reigning view of science, did not do them justice. A few of these animals were as large as a dog and spunky enough to devour dinosaurs, at least juvenile dinosaurs.

The 130-million-year-old fossils, announced yesterday by Chinese paleontologists, challenge conventional thinking and lead to a new and more diverse perception of mammal life in the Mesozoic era, 280 million to 65 million years ago.

In interviews and a report being published today in the journal Nature, the researchers described finding the skull and most of the bones of what they say is the largest mammal known to live in the age of dinosaurs. The animal's skull was half again the length of the next largest mammal of the period. The entire body probably weighed 30 pounds and stretched more than three feet, longer than a good-size basset hound's.

From the same fossil beds in northern China, the paleontologists also uncovered the remains of a related species about 15 inches long, the size of an opossum, and made a striking observation. The mammal's last meal had been a juvenile dinosaur. Its limbs, fingers and teeth were lodged within the mammal's rib cage where its stomach had been.

I look forward to them finding a dinosaur recipe written on a cave wall.

I understand dinosaur tastes just like chicken...