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Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies
Large plant-eating dinosaurs are usually presumed to have been strictly herbivorous, because their derived teeth and jaws were capable of processing fibrous plant foods. This inferred feeding behavior offers a generalized view of dinosaur food habits, but rare direct fossil evidence of diet provides...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5608751/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28935986 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11538-w |
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author | Chin, Karen Feldmann, Rodney M. Tashman, Jessica N. |
author_facet | Chin, Karen Feldmann, Rodney M. Tashman, Jessica N. |
author_sort | Chin, Karen |
collection | PubMed |
description | Large plant-eating dinosaurs are usually presumed to have been strictly herbivorous, because their derived teeth and jaws were capable of processing fibrous plant foods. This inferred feeding behavior offers a generalized view of dinosaur food habits, but rare direct fossil evidence of diet provides more nuanced insights into feeding behavior. Here we describe fossilized feces (coprolites) that demonstrate recurring consumption of crustaceans and rotted wood by large Late Cretaceous dinosaurs. These multi-liter coprolites from the Kaiparowits Formation are primarily composed of comminuted conifer wood tissues that were fungally degraded before ingestion. Thick fragments of laminar crustacean cuticle are scattered within the coprolite contents and suggest that the dinosaurian defecators consumed sizeable crustaceans that sheltered in rotting logs. The diet of decayed wood and crustaceans offered a substantial supply of plant polysaccharides, with added dividends of animal protein and calcium. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the fossilized fecal residues depict year-round feeding habits. It is more reasonable to infer that these coprolites reflected seasonal dietary shifts—possibly related to the dinosaurs’ oviparous breeding activities. This surprising fossil evidence challenges conventional notions of herbivorous dinosaur diets and reveals a degree of dietary flexibility that is consistent with that of extant herbivorous birds. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5608751 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-56087512017-10-04 Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies Chin, Karen Feldmann, Rodney M. Tashman, Jessica N. Sci Rep Article Large plant-eating dinosaurs are usually presumed to have been strictly herbivorous, because their derived teeth and jaws were capable of processing fibrous plant foods. This inferred feeding behavior offers a generalized view of dinosaur food habits, but rare direct fossil evidence of diet provides more nuanced insights into feeding behavior. Here we describe fossilized feces (coprolites) that demonstrate recurring consumption of crustaceans and rotted wood by large Late Cretaceous dinosaurs. These multi-liter coprolites from the Kaiparowits Formation are primarily composed of comminuted conifer wood tissues that were fungally degraded before ingestion. Thick fragments of laminar crustacean cuticle are scattered within the coprolite contents and suggest that the dinosaurian defecators consumed sizeable crustaceans that sheltered in rotting logs. The diet of decayed wood and crustaceans offered a substantial supply of plant polysaccharides, with added dividends of animal protein and calcium. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the fossilized fecal residues depict year-round feeding habits. It is more reasonable to infer that these coprolites reflected seasonal dietary shifts—possibly related to the dinosaurs’ oviparous breeding activities. This surprising fossil evidence challenges conventional notions of herbivorous dinosaur diets and reveals a degree of dietary flexibility that is consistent with that of extant herbivorous birds. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-09-21 /pmc/articles/PMC5608751/ /pubmed/28935986 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11538-w Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Chin, Karen Feldmann, Rodney M. Tashman, Jessica N. Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies |
title | Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies |
title_full | Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies |
title_fullStr | Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies |
title_full_unstemmed | Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies |
title_short | Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies |
title_sort | consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5608751/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28935986 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11538-w |
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