Forever locked in combat (Image: David Clark/Dinosaurs Alive/IMAX Film/Giant Screen Films)
The Velociraptor and Protoceratops were engaged in a desperate struggle when they were abruptly buried by a landslide
Discovered: Gobi desert, Mongolia, 1971
Age: 74 million years
Location: Mongolian Dinosaur Museum, Ulan Bator
They will remain forever locked in mortal combat. The Velociraptor has sunk its deadly foot claw deep into the neck of the herbivore, a boar-sized creature called Protoceratops. This vicious attack may have hit the carotid artery – a lethal blow.
But the Protoceratops fought back. It has thrown the Velociraptor to the ground before it, and its jaws are locked on to the predator's right arm. The bite appears to have broken the Velociraptor's arm. "There is no doubt these animals were fighting," says Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who studied the fossil while it was on loan ...
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