A new study suggests that some predatory dinosaurs used ambush hunting techniques similar to modern cats, Jonathan Ball of BBC reports.
The research, published in PLoS One, studied the fossil remains of two Sinocalliopteryx dinosaurs, eight-foot-long creatures that walked on powerful hind legs, and found the ground dwellers had been feasting on primitive birds and flying dinosaurs when they died.
Dr. Bell said the dinosaurs were wily hunters and that cats are a good comparison because they are "incredibly stealthy, stalking their prey before pouncing."
The Canadian-Chinese team found a Sinornithosaurus, a feathered flying dinosaur measuring about 3 feet 4 inches, inside the stomach of one of the fossils from northeast China and preserved remains of two primitive crow-sized birds in the other.
"I can imagine a Sinocalliopteryx stalking a bird through the underbrush waiting for the right moment to leap into the air and catching a bird mid-flight," researcher Dr. Phil Bell told BBC.
The view has not gained universal approval, however, as Dr. Jakob Vinther of the University of Bristol told BBC that the "only way to strongly argue for this hypothesis would be to have more evidence."
Ball notes that fossils provide one of the few tangible links back to the Cretaceous and Jurassic eras—when dinosaurs ruled the earth—as they represent a petrified and rudimentary snapshot of prehistoric life.
"It's so rare to get a glimpse into how dinosaurs – animals that have been extinct for millions of years – behaved," Dr. Bell said. "We now know more about the diet of this species than any other dinosaur."