Velociraptor couldn't resist dead pterosaur for dinner

Jeff Hecht, contributor

(Image: David W. E. Hone)

A new fossil from Mongolia shows that the swift, deadly predator Velociraptor wouldn't pass up a free lunch. Lodged within the rib cage of this new Velociraptor fossil are a few fragments of pterosaur bone - picked out in the image above with black arrows. The white arrow shows a break in one of the dinosaur's ribs that had begun to heal before its death.

Because the pterosaur bone fragments lie roughly where the gut would have been, it's likely that they are the remains of this Velociraptor's final meal, concludes David Hone of the University of Dublin, Ireland.

The pterosaur bone fragments are so large that they must have come from an animal with a wingspan of 2 to 3 metres and a body weight of at least 9 kilograms. The juvenile Velociraptor weighed only about 13 kilograms - too small to tackle such a large animal, says Hone. He thinks the Velociraptor must have scavenged a pterosaur carcass instead.

Journal reference: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.02.021

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1d3d1600/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A30Cvelociraptor0Edined0Eon0Edead0Epte0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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