Found in roughly 160-million-year-old rocks in North China, the Yanliao Biota is a diverse array of beautifully preserved fossils, including dinosaurs, pterosaurs and even early mammals. But it isn’t all fur and feathers. Paleontologists have now unearthed fossils of two surprisingly large ancient lamprey species, swimming menaces that latched onto and bored holes into their unsuspecting neighbors.
Modern parasitic lampreys’ funnel-shaped, toothy mouths tend to be adapted to consume blood or flesh. Based on the arrangement of teeth and other feeding apparatuses in the fossils, the newly discovered species probably weren’t bloodsuckers — they were flesh eaters, the team reports October 31 in Nature Communications.
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