Snakes and sauropods

June 2, 2010 7:14 PM

Can a snake prey on a dinosaur? The answer is yes. A plug of wet sediment captures a snake preying on a dinosaur hatchling.
posted by unliteral (16 comments total)

That's my daily dose of awesome right there. It was getting late and I was getting worried I wouldn't get it.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:17 PM on June 2, 2010

WOOT. Take that you uppity dinosaurs! Old school reptiles ftw!
posted by strixus at 7:56 PM on June 2, 2010

I just imagined a totally ridiculous snake digesting a mature T. Rex. (does not mean it really ever happened)
posted by rainy at 8:41 PM on June 2, 2010

strixus: "WOOT. Take that you uppity dinosaurs! Old school reptiles ftw!"

I think snakes are new school reptiles. They had legs and then evolved out of them.
posted by battlebison at 8:56 PM on June 2, 2010

Ad in posted link: "Egg donor? We need you!"
posted by hermitosis at 9:27 PM on June 2, 2010

battlebison: "I think snakes are new school reptiles. They had legs and then evolved out of them."

And they did that as recently as the Cretaceous period. Dinosaurs are definitely the old school ones in this case.
posted by brundlefly at 9:39 PM on June 2, 2010

Yes, a snake can eat a sauropod.

And so can you, thanks to this Southern gentleman among many others.
posted by killdevil at 9:39 PM on June 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

Snakes are pretty new-school in comparison to the caecilians, a distinctly creepy-looking order of subterranean eyeless amphibians that were doing the snake-y thing a hundred million years before the snakes made it cool.
posted by killdevil at 9:44 PM on June 2, 2010 [3 favorites]

... Snake vs REX?
posted by fuq at 10:47 PM on June 2, 2010

needs the 'nomnomnom' tag...also maybe some barbeque sauce.
posted by sexyrobot at 1:45 AM on June 3, 2010

And so can you, thanks to this Southern gentleman among many others.

Chickens is theropods.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:46 AM on June 3, 2010

Cool! My friend Tyler made the model. He's got the coolest job in the world.
posted by hydrophonic at 6:28 AM on June 3, 2010

That is indeed cool, hydrophonic. That model is great. I'm sorry your friend Tyler didn't get a mention.
posted by unliteral at 6:53 AM on June 3, 2010

It's an interesting conclusion, but I wonder about it - there's no presented evidence that the hatchling came from the crushed egg. The snake could have been caught in the process of eating that or another egg or its contents, something some snakes do. There's also an unlikely possibility that the snake was food (I'm presuming that sauropods are not carnivorous).
posted by plinth at 11:46 AM on June 3, 2010

I'm sorry your friend Tyler didn't get a mention.

He did! It's in the credits of the video.
posted by hydrophonic at 4:18 PM on June 3, 2010

ROU_Xenophobe: "Chickens is theropods."

Let's just say that you can still eat Saurician dinosaurs, then.
posted by brundlefly at 4:33 PM on June 3, 2010