Green tree ants swarm over oak blue caterpillars but they are not attacking them. They are drinking a sweet liquid that the caterpillars give off especially to attract the ants. The ants act like living armor, shielding the caterpillar from wasps that might lay eggs on it. The ants and the caterpillars are partners in nature.
Eotyrannus
Eotyrannus A previously unknown relative of Tyrannosaurus rex
has been unearthed in Britain. Eotyrannus (early tyrant) lengi, was
a 4.5 meter long carnivore that lived 120 to 125 million years ago.
This discovery can be viewed as part of a missing link. The T-rex
lived around 60 - 70 million years ago, and by this time, the
Eotyrannus lengi was already 55 million years old. The first bones
were found in 1997 on a cliff top near a village in Britain, but it
has taken 4 more years to excavate the site more fully and to
identify the find. This link provides much more information on the
early evolution of T-rex that was previously unknown. The
Eotyrannus is much smaller than the T-rex, which stood 11.5 meters
high, but had a similar skull, shoulder and limb structure. It
would have been a fast, agile predator, preying mainly on species
such as Valdosaurus and Hypsilophodon. Eotyrannus may also be
closely related to the Velociraptor, a two-meter-long predator of
the mid-Cretaceous period, around 90 million years ago. Scientists
say that their small head, long powerful arms and sharp claws were
very similar to those of Eotyrranus. MAY 10, 2001
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