Tag: Carnivory

News Bite: Kerberos! Giant mammal carnivore from after the Age of Dinosaurs!

It weighed twice as much as a modern wolf. It had three pairs of meat-slicing teeth. It was the first carnivorous land animal to reach 200 pounds on the entire continent of Europe after the extinction of the dinosaurs. And a team of European scientists and Past Time co-host Matthew Borths just introduced us to it. Ladies and gentlemen: meet Kerberos, monster mammal carnivore!

Filed under: Carnivora, Carnivores, Carnivory, Cenozoic, Creodonta, Creodonts, Creotonta, Europe, Fossils, France, Giant, Hyaenodontida, Hyaenodontidae, Mammals, Meat-eater, Palaeontology, Paleontology

Quick Bite Field Guide: Terror Bird or Gentle Giant?

50 million-years ago, the heir to Tyrannosaurus stalked the forests of ancient Europe and North America, snapping up the tiny ancestors of horses, cows, and wolves in its colossal meat-cleaving beak. Gastornis was a six-foot-tall, flightless bird and the king of the food chain…or that’s what we thought. For decades paleontologists looked at the huge, parrot-like head and thought the giant bird m …

Filed under: Birds, Carnivory, Cenozoic, Comparative Anatomy, Ecology, Eocene, Europe, Field Guide, Fossils, Herbivory, Isotopes, North America, Paleontology

Quick Bite Field Guide: The Giant before the Tyrant!

In the last episode of Past Time, we featured Lythronax, the oldest-known North American tyrannosaur and a close relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. But tyrannosaurs weren’t the only big carnivores to tromp through the Mesozoic of North America. Before the tyrant lizards were huge, there was another giant terrorizing the American West: Siats! Named for a Ute mythological giant, Siats was a bus-sized ca …

Filed under: Carnivory, Cretaceous, Field Guide, Fossils, Neovenatoridae, North America, Paleontology, Siats, Systematics, T. rex, Tyrannosarus, dinosaur, theropod, tyrannosaur

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