Didelphodon
| Didelphodon | ||||||||||||
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Skeletal reconstruction of Didelphodon vorax |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Chalk | ||||||||||||
| 70 to 65.5 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Didelphodon | ||||||||||||
| Marsh , 1889 | ||||||||||||
Didelphodon is a mammal from the marsupial tribe thatlivedin the Upper Cretaceous . It became extinct with the dinosaurs on the Cretaceous-Tertiary border .
Fossil remains of the animals were first found in the Lance Creek Formation in Wyoming and described as Didelphodon vorax by Othniel Charles Marsh as early as 1889 . His competitor Edward Drinker Cope described a second species, Didelphodon padanicus, in 1892 . A third species, Didelphodon coyi , comes from the well-known Horseshoe Canyon Formation and was described in 1986. All fossils of the genus, mostly jaw fragments and individual teeth, were found in the northern Great Plains of Canada and the United States.
features
The size of a small domestic cat , the Didelphodon was one of the largest mammals of its time. The molars were large, massive, and of the tribosphenic type. The occlusal surfaces consist of three cusps arranged in a triangle. In the lower jaw, the tip of the triangle pointed outwards. Inside this triangle was a depression in which the opposite upper jaw tooth gripped with its inwardly pointing triangular tip. The teeth resembled those of today's sea otter , which feeds on hard-shelled prey such as sea urchins, mussels and snails. Since Didelphodon fossils were mostly found near river deposits, it may have had a similar feeding strategy and semi-aquatic lifestyle. The premolars are reminiscent of those of the marsupial devil , which both eats carrion and can strike prey up to the size of a small wallaby . Maybe eating didelphodon carrion and hunted smaller prey.
literature
- Richard C. Fox, Bruce G. Naylor: Stagodontid marsupials from the Late Cretaceous of Canada and their systematic and functional implications. In: Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. 51, 1, 2006, ISSN 0567-7920 , pp. 13-36, (PDF; 504 kB) .
- John Acorn: Deep Alberta. Fossil facts and dinosaur digs. Royal Tyrrell Museum et al., Drumheller et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-88864-481-7 , GoogleBooks .
- Tim Haines , Paul Chambers: Dinosaurs - giants of the primeval world. Kosmos, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-440-10961-8 , p. 143.
Web links
- The Paleobiology Database Didelphodon