About 76 million years ago, something took a bite of a young man.
The creeping reptiles were large, the reptiles that wandered in the sky of our planet were when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Some species were giants. But even its large size did not keep them out of the list.
Fellowship scientists have discovered a tooth mark in the vertebrae of the neck from a wedding that is now known as Alberta. in A paper published last week In the magazine of excavation, they suggest that the teeth mark made by prehistoric, from crocodiles that extracted the young man from the beach or wiping his body. Al -Ahfar is now displayed in the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta.
Creeping came in all shapes and sizes and was found all over the world during his term on this planet, which lasted from 220 million to 65 million years. But they have fragile bones that were often destroyed before maintaining them in the fossil record. David Hoon, a fossil scientist at Queen Mary University in London, has not participated in the research.
“Scientists actually have a much better idea than the boats were eaten than they were eating,” said Calip Brown, a fossil scientist at the Royal Terill Museum, who was among the authors of the new study. Excavator scientists have discovered only about four Petrosor fossils that indicate that predators have sometimes took these winged reptiles-including the neck bone with marks similar to crocodiles in Romania and a long bone that partially digested in the Felosella Fengolia belly.
These last fossils-two sizes-were found before students during the 2023 digging in the formation of the dinosaurs park in Alberta. Dr. Brown said that the area is very rich so that you cannot walk without interfering with the bones of dinosaurs.
He and his team in the Al -Ahfar Museum were identified as belonging to a young Burias. The complete members of this type had wings more than 30 feet. This youth was still growing and reaching its wings only about six feet when he died.
During the fossil examination, Dr. Brown noticed a small bite mark. The team examined the hole under the microscope and sent the bone to perform a CT scan. What they found was consistent with a teeth hole when the bone was still new.
Biter’s determination was the next piece of the puzzle. There were many potential candidates. Although the Cretaceous Age Alberta was farther north of what it is today, it was a green tropical area that borders an inner sea. The wetlands near the open water were home to many large dinosaurs, crocodiles and mammals.
But the dinosaurs seemed to be unlikely guilty. The types of dinosaurs that lived in the region at the time were teeth in the form of blade or did not match the circular shape of the hole. Crocodiles, on the other hand, make circular holes. The hole is also the appropriate size for two types of crocodiles that lived with giant boats. For Dr. Brown, this made this as a crocodile or crocodile predatory “the most likely candidate” for the tag.
Even with a potential suspect, no one knows how the last moments of the young man were. Has he died and became a “free lunch” of hungry crocodiles that happened on his body, as Dr. Brown speculated? Or is it a victim of an ambush?
Both interpretations are possible. Like crocodiles and crocodiles today. “This is what crocodiles do.”