This fossil of a mammal biting a dinosaur captures a death battle's final moments

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/18/ [login to see] /this-fossil-of-a-mammal-biting-a-dinosaur-captures-a-death-battles-final-moments
When dinosaurs ruled the Earth, we tend to think of the mammals at the time — including our distant ancestors — as small and quivering in the shadows.

"We've always had this picture of mammals as the literal underdogs," says Elsa Panciroli, a paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. "They're being trampled. They're cowering in the darkness at night, just trying to avoid being eaten."

But a remarkable new fossil, originating in the early Cretaceous some 125 million years ago and now described in the journal Scientific Reports, conjures a rather different possibility. It consists of two intertwined skeletons — an upstart mammal sinking its teeth into a much larger dinosaur.

"Our best guess is that the mammal was in the middle of attacking the dinosaur," says Jordan Mallon, one of the authors of the new study and a paleobiologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature.