The dinosaurs that led the change to vegetarianism..

[theblackalchemist]

The dinosaurs that led the change to vegetarianism..

 

The dinosaurs that led the change to vegetarianism..

 

 

Chicago: A rare juvenile skull of a 190 million-year-old dinosaur may help explain when an important group of plant eaters branched off from carnivorous cousins, US and British researchers said on Thursday.

 

The tiny skull belonged to a young Heterodontosaurus.

 

“This juvenile skull indicates that these dinosaurs were still in the midst of that transition,” said Laura Porro, a post-doctoral student at the University of Chicago, who described the skull in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

 

Porro came across the skull in a South African Museum, while researching the eating habits of adults of this type of dinosaur, which belonged to the herbivore order ornithischians that lived during the Early Jurassic period.

 

Heterodontosaurus had an unusual combination of teeth, with large fang-like canines at the front of their jaws and worn, molar-like grinding teeth at the back.

 

Its tooth structure suggest the tiny creature was evolving from a meat eater to a plant eater, the scientists said.

 

The Heterodontosaurus was one of the earliest of the ornithischians that soon become very important in the Age of Dinosaurs.

 

Later ornithischians included the duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs such as Triceratops and tank-like dinosaurs such as Ankylosaurus.

 

While adult Heterodontosaurus reached just over three feet in length and weighed about five 2.5 kg, the juvenile likely weighed less than 200 grams and would have been just about a foot and a half long.

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