Nice.
Course I'd be more impressed if they found gun shot wounds.
Top brainboxes using advanced technology say they may have found a "smoking gun" in the form of a bite mark inflicted during a long-ago battle between a mighty dinosaur and another giant reptile. Dino bite rumble smoking gun action The bite mark in question dates from the late Triassic era, and was found in a rare fossil …
Having a tooth yanked out of your jaw like that probably hurt quite a bit...
I'm not sure about phytosaurs or rauisucids, but the later theropods were constantly growing new teeth and shedding their teeth, just as sharks did then and still do today. We've got plenty of examples of discarded, worn carnivore teeth from the period, including some found close to bones showing matching bite marks. It's the fact that a tooth got stuck in a wound (now that would have hurt!) and the bone healed around it that tells us so much more about these creatures than just another shed tooth.
Agreed this is what I was thinking and animal adapted to the water has plenty of advantage if its in its element. I am thinking as well creatures like fish, have a greater percentage of muscle mass compared with us land animals probably since they don't have to support themselves so much against gravity, admittedly a crocodilian uses the land but modern salties are about 50% muscle mass. so size may not be everything.*
*insert suitable joke here.
I'm sure it isn't an everyday thing to find such fossils, but maybe it would be more common if paleontologists did more volunteer work, instead of just paid work studies. I've probably worked for free at least 1/4 of my life probing, walking, and digging for anything interesting, and I and my buddies have found bullets not made since 1886 embedded in bones and other artifacts, fossils with sharks teeth embedded in bone of who knows what, in fact it isn't sure what animal bit what other animal, but I am lucky enough to live in a region where one of the largest shallow seas was existent in the CT boundary. We've also found paleolithic arrow heads, knives, and spear points embedded in antlers and bone from the period - these are not tools or such fabrications but obviously from chaotic happenstance - my buddy is a collector and doesn't want to sell them, so he does not share the booty with archaeologists. I've been trying to get him to keep notes and at least record the GPS coordinates so scientists can follow up with studies some time in the future! Perhaps these boffins need to get out more?