Word: robustus
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...dinosaur-age mammals were never larger than squirrels. The animal, which lived some 130 million years ago, had the dimensions of a midsize dog or large badger--by far the biggest dinosaur-age mammal ever found. And the second, a new specimen of a previously discovered species called Repenomamus robustus, refutes the notion that it was always the mammals that got eaten. Inside the skeleton where the animal's stomach would have been are the fossilized remains of a baby dino. "This discovery was the chance of a lifetime," says Jin Meng, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural...
...last meal] was a dinosaur, not a mammal," says Hu. On closer examination, the scientists determined that the remains were those of a juvenile psittacosaur, a herbivore known to inhabit the region. Some of the arm and leg bones were still attached to each other, suggesting that R. robustus didn't chew its food thoroughly but wolfed it down in large chunks...
That proves that at least one mammal from the age of dinosaurs was carnivorous--and since R. giganticus is a close cousin of R. robustus, it's reasonable to assume that the larger species ate meat as well. Moreover, the size and anatomy of R. giganticus, found in the same fossil beds as its smaller relative, suggest that it was an active predator rather than simply a scavenger. "It had a robust body, with short legs that splay out to the side, similar to a Tasmanian devil," says Meng. "It could walk fast and probably run. It could certainly move...
...COMMENT] May be an ancestor of A. boisei and A. robustus. The fossil above, found by Richard Leakey's team, is called the Black Skull...
...robustus...