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Mammals Preyed on Dinosaurs?
Anonymous Howard writes "Nature is just one of many sites reporting that 130 million-year-old fossils unearthed in China suggest that contrary to conventional wisdom, some early mammals were large enough to prey on dinosaurs. Evidence? How about the fossil of a large badger-like animal with the bones of an entire baby dino in its gut?"
Overview: Open-Source Inc. has some great ideas; if they can utilize them into a more usable form I'm sure they could become the next Microsoft. Their current efforts though simply don't make the grade, and as much as I hate doing it I am going to have to go 'against the grain' as it were and slate Linux.
Directed By: Open-Source Development Inc.
The Pros: It sounds harsh but it's incredibly difficult to think of any. Linux is halfway to being great in so many ways, but never quite achieves. Very sad because there is obviously a lot of talent behind the making of Linux.
The Cons: No technical support, terrible file structuring. Bad, awful system recovery. It also Has some major software compatibility problems, which need to be fixed if Linux is going to really take off. Unnecessary difficulties imposed upon the user.
I'm sure many of you have experienced breaches of your computer's security in the past. Yes, we've all been there, re-formatting from the boot disk and losing the contents of your A: drive. Well an exciting, new, innovative project from the up-and-coming young company 'Open-Source' promises to change all this!
Linux is causing a big stir on the Internet culture. This is mainly due to its direct opposition to Microsoft's Windows98, who has in the past have been accused of monopolising the computer market by using "insider tactics" with companies such as Gateway and AMD. Make no mistake; you do not need to buy a new computer to install this software because Linux will, quite remarkably, run on a Windows formatted machine! Many critics and computer "wiz-kids" are still not exactly sure how this works, however the company behind the magic, Open-Source Development Inc., have declined to reveal what exactly makes Linux so successful in utilizing Windows machines.
Now I know exactly what you're thinking; you've probably heard all the hype up to this point about Linux and the question you want answered is, "does it perform?" Sadly the answer is no. It can be considered as the smaller, less successful recluse brother of WindowsME. This is not unjust and without reason, as there are far too many downfalls to Linux for it to be considered a serious contender for the most commonly accepted operating systems. An example of one of the most harrowing being the inclusion of 'fsck' in the final retail release of Linux. This basically causes major conflict issues with the file system upon improper system shutdown. I found it was myself shouting 'FSCK!' at 2 am in the morning while kicking my Linux box over, only to reboot in Windows and use Scandisk to retain my file structure and system performance.
Please don't think I have a dependency on Windows, because that is absolutely not the case. The CLI (or command-line interface for you less technical people) of Linux is where many people consider Linux to pick up pace and become a serious contender. Yes, some people would actually rather type in commands than simply point and click! Since 'point and click' technology has been developed there is no longer any need for the use of long commands... or so it would seem. But Linux ignores these developments and seemingly takes a step backwards. When compared to Windows98 or WindowsME which has a DOS command line and very advanced point and click interface, you can see where Linux obviously begins to lose ground.
I'm not even sure if I really want to begin on the compatibility issues Linux has. Absolutely none of the programs I had immediately available to me would function at all in Linux. Many of these programs are vital to my work, such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver. These programs are two of the biggest commercial IT products, and Linux not supporting them is absolutely absurd. This was obvious not considered by Open-Source Inc. when they were developing Linux. The advantages I found while using Linux are sparse to say the least, it did only crash a few times during the testing period... but this is really irrelevant when you consider there is actually nothing you can d
LOLZ @ Gigantic Badgers eating Dinosaurs!
Badgers?! We don't need no stinking badgers!
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
..as it makes it seem the mammals were larger than the dinosaurs people typically think of, like the T-Rex or others, who are very, very large. But according to New Scientist, they were only around a meter long (and smaller) and would prey on very small dinos.
A blog like any other.
I for one welcome our new giant badger mammal overlords.
If Nature is the primary source (where the research results were published) is it really "one of many sites?" I'm being really picky here, but there's a huge difference between an article written by the people who dug up the fossils and an article written by someone who simply read about it. Of course, usually, the primary source is not even mentioned here, so I guess I can't complain too much.
So the mammal died, and the dinosaur was feeding on it, but died while inside it. Or it crawled inside the carcass after some other predator had fed on it, possibly simply for warmth (explaining it if it were a vegetarian).
Granted, the first interpretation is probably correct, but they need to have reasons for rejecting the alternatives.
badger badger badger badger badger badger... mushroom! mushroom! (it _had_ to be said, karma be damned!)
I think archeologists would be better off not making assumptions in the absense of proof, because you can't prove a negative.
Negative vs positive is just a quality of an assertion, like like green and purple are colors. Besides, any "negative" can be reworded into a "positive", which means that you can equally prove either.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
There's a communist country/[verb]s YOU joke in there somewhere...
Ceci n'est pas un post.
Yeah, go mammals! We rawk! Suck it, dino-chumps!
Woot! Woot! Representin' in the Mesozoic!
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Mammals have been eating dinosaurs for years.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I have not read any of the articles on this, but when I heard the NPR story, I wondered what evidence they had against it simply being a scavenger along the lines of a modern hyena?
In South Korea, only FOSSILS eat dinosaurs!
Over at Pharyngula the claim is that the tooth structure and muscle attachments on the jaw indicate the strength that is characteristic of a carnivore, not a scavenger.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
However, the idea of mammals as predators upon juvenile dinosaurs goes back a long way. One of the older hypotheses about the demise of the dinosaurs is that mammals developed a taste for eggs and ate them into oblivion.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
That was an informative blog entry.
Years ago, I watched a television show where proto-humans ate dinosaurs in the form of brontoburgers and giant slabs of ribs.
They also had foot powered cars, and cameras with woodpecker-like dinosaurs carving images into stone tablets.
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
Just another red herring thrown out by our great and merciful God 6000 years ago in order to tempt his creatures into eternal damnation for creating heretical theories about the history of the world based on the evidence he planted all around them. Nothing to see here. Move along.
sudo ergo sum
Really, it was nothing.
The mysterious "mammal" is actually a triconodont . They differ from eutherians (placental mammals) which are what we usually think of as "modern" mammals. Aside from toothy traits, these creatures , like marsupials, did not have a closed pelvis. Closing the pelvis changes the reproductive behavior by adding the eutherian trait of estrus. This makes the female mate with every ovulation. Then there is ambulation. Think of a duck. A duck has an open, "U"-shaped pelvis so it walks - - -like a duck. In a cat, which is an eutherian, the pelvis provides a stable circular platform for attachement of legs to the body. Cats can walk fast, in a STRAIGHT line. Possoms waddle. Kangaroos leap, using both legs to propell themselves forward. All of this is to point out that the triconodonts were not agile ambulators. This is the main reason for the demise of the big carnivorous marsupials of Australia and ancient S.America. When the true eutherian arrived, it was able to out-reproduce and out-run the other vertebrates. Think of the destructive eutherian as a rat, eating it's way through extinct species. The first eutherians probably concentrated on the eggs of the other vertebrates and then took-on the pseudo-mammals. Interesting.