New York — Using fossilized samples of feces and vomit from Polandthe Scientists have reconstructed how dinosaurs came to dominate the Earth millions of years ago.
Researchers aren’t sure if the rise of dinosaurs over 30 million years was due to luck, skill, weather or some combination. However, they came to this conclusion: “It was not sudden,” said study co-author Martin Qvarnström of Uppsala University.
The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, analyzed hundreds of dinosaur excrement fragments to reconstruct who ate who 200 million years ago.
The first dinosaurs had initiative, Qvarnström said, because they ate what they could, including insects, fish and plants.
When weather conditions changed, they quickly adapted. Herbivorous dinosaurs, for example, ate a greater variety of vegetables than other vegetarians of the time, so it was easier to expand their palates when wetter conditions gave rise to new plant species.
Since the study’s findings were limited to Polish fossils, Qvarnström said he would like to see if his ideas hold up against fossil records from around the world.
It’s not unusual for scientists to study ancient fecal matter to understand creatures of the past, said Emma Dunne, a paleobiologist at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. But fossilized feces can look like blobs or chunks of rock, and they aren’t always found near fossils of the animal that produced them, making it difficult for scientists to know where they came from.
In this study, Researchers found fish scales, insect pieces, and bone fragments embedded in the feces.
“They’re a really unobtrusive, fairly simple part of the environment,” said Dunne, who was not involved in the new research. “But they contain so much sensitive and accurate information.”