Dinosaur teeth 'hold secret to eating'

Dinosaur teeth 'hold secret to eating'

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Tuesday, 30, Jun 2009 07:37

Scientists have discovered analysis of dinosaur teeth holds the key to a completely unique way of eating.

Microscopic analysis of the teeth found the duck-billed Hadrosaurs had a way of eating which is unlike anything alive today.

The study, which was led by the University of Leicester with researchers from the Natural History Museum, looked into the feeding mechanisms of dinosaurs and their place within their own eco-system.

Scratches found on the teeth discovered the movements were complex and involved up and down, sideways and front to back motion.

Palaeontologist Mark Purnell of the University of Leicester department of geology, who led the research, said: "For millions of years, until their extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, duck-billed dinosaurs - or hadrosaurs - were the world's dominant herbivores.

"Our study uses a new approach based on analysis of the microscopic scratches that formed on hadrosaur's teeth as they fed, tens of millions of years ago. The scratches have been preserved intact since the animals died. They can tell us precisely how hadrosaur jaws moved, and the kind of food these huge herbivores ate, but nobody has tried to analyse them before."

According to Paul Barrett, palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, "this shows that hadrosaurs did chew, but in a completely different way to anything alive today".

The research also sheds light on what the dinosaurs ate.

Vince Williams of the University of Leicester said: "We can tell from the scratches that the hadrosaur's food either contained small particles of grit, normal for vegetation cropped close to the ground, or, like grass, contained microscopic granules of silica. We know that horsetails were a common plant at the time and have this characteristic; they may well have been an important food for hadrosaurs".