VENOMOUS DINOSAURS?

Though the movie ‘Jurassic Park’ was packed with pseudo-science, one of its fictions may have accidentally anticipated a dinosaur discovery announced today—venomous raptors.
Though its a far cry from the movie’s venom-spitting Dilophosaurus, the 125-million-year-old Sinornithosaurus might have attacked like today’s rear-fanged snakes, a new study suggests.
Rear-fanged snakes do not inject venom. Instead, the toxin flows down a telltale groove in a fang’s surface and into the bite wound, inducing a state of shock.
In Sinornithosaurus fossils, the researchers discovered have an intriguing pocket, possibly a venom gland, connected to the base of a fang by a long groove, which likely housed a venom duct, the study says. Sinornithosaurus fangs also feature snakelike grooves in their surfaces.
“The ductwork leading out of the venom gland gave the venom a way to travel to the base of the teeth, where the venom welled up in the grooves,” says study co-author paleontologist David Burnham of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center.
“So when they sank their teeth into tissue of the victim, it allowed the venom, which was really enhanced saliva, to get into the wound.”
Turkey-size Sinornithosaurus, which might have had feathers, lived in the forests of what’s now northeastern China, and was a member of the family Dromaeosaurida. Birdlike Sinornithosaurus probably used its longish fangs to put the bite on prehistoric birds. Like rear-fanged snakes and some lizards, the dinosaur probably had nonfatal venom that could shock its victims into a defenseless stupor—allowing Sinornithosaurus to eat in peace.