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Description
Although the species is one of the largest terrestrial predators ever to love in North America, not every Tyrannosaurus rex individual would manage to grow into a giant apex predator. A very young T. rex hatchling shown here has unfortunately succumbed to health problems and its body lies lifeless on a Dryophyllum subfalcatum log, 66 million years ago during the very end of the Cretaceous period in what is now the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, USA. The young dinosaur's parents are not around as it was not able to catch up with then or its siblings when they progressed through the forest, and the unattended carcass attracts scavengers. A 2-meter long feathered dinosaur, Acheroraptor temertyorum, arrives to eat the flesh, this common threat to young dinosaurs does not turn down the chance to eat one already dead. But even while the Acheroraptor is still biting the tail, two smaller animals just couldn't wait their turn to eat. A pair of carnivorous mammals, Nanocuris improvida, emerge from teh undergrowth to sneak a bite. The mammals are a potential prey item for the feathered dinosaur, but right now the Acheroraptor isn't gonna spend energy chasing teh fast mammals when a dead Tyrannosaurus hatchling is already in its clutches, giving the Nanocuris pair a chance to grab a small amount of this food they rarely get to taste.

Drawing privately requested by someone in my notes who asked for an artwork of Nanocuris eating a young Tyrannosaurus.The person says they heard from this (www.deviantart.com/inmyarmsinm… ) and the comments of it that Nanocuris grew 2 meters long but of course I was immediately skeptical since that is longer than a leopard, ridiculously huge for a Mesozoic mammal. The guy claiming these sizes says it was calculated from how Nanocuris was twice as large as the meter-long Didelphodon, but after comparing photos of the molar teeth of both species with scale bars I have found that Nanocuris molars were only half as big as those of Didelphodon so these size estimates must be crazy wrong. At best I'd say Nanocuris was 50 centimeters long, which is still big for a Mesozoic mammal but nowhere near as large as the person claimed.

So with the size cleared up, here's some more info on the creature. Nanocuris is an extinct mammal that lived in the very latest Cretaceous period of Canada and the US, including the famous Hell Creek site, living alongside large dinosaurs like the famous Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops. Originally it was placed in its own family with no close relatives, the Nanocuridae, within the Eutheria clade (eutherians also include extant placental mammals). However more recent analysis suggests it instead was a member of the Deltatheridiidae family, an extinct family of predatory metatherian mammals (so its closest living relatives would instead be marsupials). The deltatheridiids were rather small, many comparable in size to weasels and martens, but their long sharp canine teeth show they were predators of small animals like other mammals, reptiles and birds. In fact remains of the small Mongolian troodontid dinosaur Archaeornithoides show bite marks matching the teeth of the deltatheridiid Deltatheridium, suggesting that at least on occasion they even hunted small and/or juvenile dinosaurs. In fact the canines on at least some deltatheridiids such as Lotheridium are so long that they count as saber-teeth like what's seen in the extinct felid Smilodon so for their size they must have been ferocious killers. I'm not sure if the fangs on Nanocuris were that long though, in fact as far as I can tell from what little information on it is found online it is only known from teeth and fragmentary jaw parts. This reconstruction is based mostly on the related Deltatheridium (quite much the only deltatheridiid with good remains and reconstructions) so take it with a grain of salt.

The dromaeosaurs, or 'raptors', were feathered theropod dinosaurs with a large retractable claw on each foot, most species being small for non-avian dinosaurs and not growing over 3 meters. They were extremely widespread during the Cretaceous, remains found on almost all continents (except Australia and Antarctica, but they likely are just waiting to be found there), and fragmentary dromaeosaur teeth from the Hell Creek Formation have been known for decades. Over the years these have been tentatively assigned to Dromaeosaurus and Saurornitholestes, but in 2013 more complete remains (and by that I mean just the front half of a skull) of a dromaeosaur from Hell Creek were described as a new species, Acheroraptor temertyorum, so those teeth are now more likely to be of this species. Acheroraptor was a velociraptorine dromaeosaur that grew 2 to 3 meters long and likely was a main predator of Hell Creek's many smaller animals such as mammals and young dinosaurs, perhaps capable of killing the youngest Tyrannosaurus hatchlings. Like any other carnivore it probably wouldn't turn down carrion when it came across carcasses either, possibly also scavenging on what's left of the kills of Tyrannosaurus.

While it is true that many dinosaurs were born significantly smaller than the adults of their kind, I have since discovered that even a newborn T. rex must have been too large for a Nanocuris to kill. I mean look at this image (cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tmH4… ), the smaller one is the size of an EMBRYONIC Albertosaurus, a smaller tyrannosaur species, so it turns out newborn rexes wouldn't be small enough to barely hug all the way around an adult's tooth like what Dinosaur Revolution showed me. So to fit with the request it would have to be scavenging. My life is a lie.

Also first Nanocuris on DA!

Description
Although the species is one of the largest terrestrial predators ever to love in North America, not every Tyrannosaurus rex individual would manage to grow into a giant apex predator. A very young T. rex hatchling shown here has unfortunately succumbed to health problems and its body lies lifeless on a Dryophyllum subfalcatum log, 66 million years ago during the very end of the Cretaceous period in what is now the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, USA. The young dinosaur's parents are not around as it was not able to catch up with then or its siblings when they progressed through the forest, and the unattended carcass attracts scavengers. A 2-meter long feathered dinosaur, Acheroraptor temertyorum, arrives to eat the flesh, this common threat to young dinosaurs does not turn down the chance to eat one already dead. But even while the Acheroraptor is still biting the tail, two smaller animals just couldn't wait their turn to eat. A pair of carnivorous mammals, Nanocuris improvida, emerge from teh undergrowth to sneak a bite. The mammals are a potential prey item for the feathered dinosaur, but right now the Acheroraptor isn't gonna spend energy chasing teh fast mammals when a dead Tyrannosaurus hatchling is already in its clutches, giving the Nanocuris pair a chance to grab a small amount of this food they rarely get to taste.

Drawing privately requested by someone in my notes who asked for an artwork of Nanocuris eating a young Tyrannosaurus.The person says they heard from this (www.deviantart.com/inmyarmsinm… ) and the comments of it that Nanocuris grew 2 meters long but of course I was immediately skeptical since that is longer than a leopard, ridiculously huge for a Mesozoic mammal. The guy claiming these sizes says it was calculated from how Nanocuris was twice as large as the meter-long Didelphodon, but after comparing photos of the molar teeth of both species with scale bars I have found that Nanocuris molars were only half as big as those of Didelphodon so these size estimates must be crazy wrong. At best I'd say Nanocuris was 50 centimeters long, which is still big for a Mesozoic mammal but nowhere near as large as the person claimed.

So with the size cleared up, here's some more info on the creature. Nanocuris is an extinct mammal that lived in the very latest Cretaceous period of Canada and the US, including the famous Hell Creek site, living alongside large dinosaurs like the famous Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops. Originally it was placed in its own family with no close relatives, the Nanocuridae, within the Eutheria clade (eutherians also include extant placental mammals). However more recent analysis suggests it instead was a member of the Deltatheridiidae family, an extinct family of predatory metatherian mammals (so its closest living relatives would instead be marsupials). The deltatheridiids were rather small, many comparable in size to weasels and martens, but their long sharp canine teeth show they were predators of small animals like other mammals, reptiles and birds. In fact remains of the small Mongolian troodontid dinosaur Archaeornithoides show bite marks matching the teeth of the deltatheridiid Deltatheridium, suggesting that at least on occasion they even hunted small and/or juvenile dinosaurs. In fact the canines on at least some deltatheridiids such as Lotheridium are so long that they count as saber-teeth like what's seen in the extinct felid Smilodon so for their size they must have been ferocious killers. I'm not sure if the fangs on Nanocuris were that long though, in fact as far as I can tell from what little information on it is found online it is only known from teeth and fragmentary jaw parts. This reconstruction is based mostly on the related Deltatheridium (quite much the only deltatheridiid with good remains and reconstructions) so take it with a grain of salt.

The dromaeosaurs, or 'raptors', were feathered theropod dinosaurs with a large retractable claw on each foot, most species being small for non-avian dinosaurs and not growing over 3 meters. They were extremely widespread during the Cretaceous, remains found on almost all continents (except Australia and Antarctica, but they likely are just waiting to be found there), and fragmentary dromaeosaur teeth from the Hell Creek Formation have been known for decades. Over the years these have been tentatively assigned to Dromaeosaurus and Saurornitholestes, but in 2013 more complete remains (and by that I mean just the front half of a skull) of a dromaeosaur from Hell Creek were described as a new species, Acheroraptor temertyorum, so those teeth are now more likely to be of this species. Acheroraptor was a velociraptorine dromaeosaur that grew 2 to 3 meters long and likely was a main predator of Hell Creek's many smaller animals such as mammals and young dinosaurs, perhaps capable of killing the youngest Tyrannosaurus hatchlings. Like any other carnivore it probably wouldn't turn down carrion when it came across carcasses either, possibly also scavenging on what's left of the kills of Tyrannosaurus.

While it is true that many dinosaurs were born significantly smaller than the adults of their kind, I have since discovered that even a newborn T. rex must have been too large for a Nanocuris to kill. I mean look at this image (cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tmH4… ), the smaller one is the size of an EMBRYONIC Albertosaurus, a smaller tyrannosaur species, so it turns out newborn rexes wouldn't be small enough to barely hug all the way around an adult's tooth like what Dinosaur Revolution showed me. So to fit with the request it would have to be scavenging. My life is a lie.

Also first Nanocuris on DA!