According to a new study by scientists from the Natural History Museum and the Universities of Bristol and Birmingham, the way dinosaurs ate a plant-based diet was different than most people think.
Using computed tomographic scans of dinosaur skulls, scientists were able to track the evolution of early dinosaur herbivores.
The five skulls from the plant-eating group Ornithischia gave the key to unlocking their feeding habits.
Triceratops and Stegosaurus are examples of later ornithischian dinosaurs that show a wide range of adaptation to eating plants.
Publishing their findings in the journal Current Biology, the scientists reveal that the early "veggie" dinosaurs had evolved very different ways to eat plants.
The large jaw muscles of Heterodontosaurus make it ideal for eating tough vegetation. The jaws of Scelidosaurus were relatively small compared to its skull. These animals had larger bodies and could bite. The skull didn't have a lot of strength. Dinosaurs rearranged their muscles to bite more efficiently.
Each dinosaur tackled the problems posed by a plant-based diet by adopting very different eating techniques. Some compensated for low eating performance through their sheer size, others developed bigger jaw muscles, or combined these approaches. The unpredictable nature of evolution is shown by the individual solutions of the animals.
Contrary to popular belief, most dinosaurs were plant eaters, even though they're all descended from the same family. Dinosaurs have been known to eat different types of food, but not much is known about how they evolved their eating styles.
The team reconstructed the jaw muscles using data from birds and crocodiles to find out where the muscles were. The skull is divided into thousands of individual parts called elements. The bite force is determined by the size and arrangement of the muscles.
In order to see how the different elements respond to the applied force, each skull was put through a simulation. The models show the areas of the skull that are stressed and the areas that are not. All of the dinosaurs had different ways of eating plants.
"If you want to understand how dinosaurs diversified into so many different types so effectively, it's critical to learn how they evolved to feed on a wide variety of vegetation in so many ways," said Professor PaulBarrett. They are set up to dominate life on land for millions of years to come.
The skull and teeth of plant-eating dinosaurs were compared by Dr. David Button, who is now a researcher at the University of Bristol. The dinosaurs looked similar, but they had different ways of tackling a diet of plants.
The research helps us understand how animals evolve. It shows that similar animals will not evolve the same characteristics. It shows how innovative and unpredictable evolution can be.
David J. Button wrote about multiple pathways to herbivory in Current Biology. www.cell.com/ current-biology/f...
Journal information: Current Biology
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