First evidence of dinosaurs 'flying' to eat birds

Paleontologists have found the bird's fossil 'preserved' in the stomach of a dinosaur. This is the first evidence that birds are a prey of dinosaurs and the world was a dangerous place for birds during that period.

Paleontologists have long suspected that birds are part of the dinosaur diet, but there is a lack of proof. Until recently, Jingmai O'Connor and colleagues at the Academy of Science in Beijing (China) have found an almost intact skeleton of a bird inside the fossil of a predator. this.

The bird belonging to the Enantiornithes group (extinct primitive birds) is located in the chest of the Microraptor gui dinosaur (a small genus of dromaeosaurid four-bladed dinosaur in the Cretaceous). They are part of a prehistoric ecosystem, known as Jehol organisms that exist in northeastern China from 133 to 120 million years ago.

It is possible that Microraptor dinosaurs flew to trees to hunt birds

The bird's intact skeleton showed that the dinosaurs had swallowed the whole prey, not torn into pieces. This not only provides evidence of what dinosaurs eat and how to eat, but it also shows how to hunt dinosaurs.

As explained by Jingmai O'Connor and colleagues, these birds often live on trees. But Microraptor dinosaurs have four wings so they can fly and hunt in the air.

However, Luis Chiappe - Los Angeles Museum of Natural History (USA) argues that 'We need to be careful when making conclusions, because the fact that Enantiornithes birds often live on trees, but not meaning they are not on the ground ' . Therefore, it is still quite early to draw conclusions about the form of hunting of four-wing dinosaurs.