A spectacular new fossil shows a mammal making a meal of a dinosaur

That dinosaurs ate the mammals that scurried beneath their feet is not in doubt. Now an extraordinary fossil newly described in Scientific Reports, unearthed by a team led by Gang Han at Hainan Vocational University of Science and Technology in China, shows that sometimes the tables were turned.

The fossil—dated to about 125m years ago, during the Cretaceous period—was formed when a flow of boiling volcanic mud engulfed two animals seemingly locked in mortal combat. The one on top is a ferret-like mammal known as Repenomamus robustus. The animal below is a herbivorous relative of Triceratops known as Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis. Animal interactions such as this are exceptionally rare in the fossil record.