Science News
Fossil faeces contain clues on dinosaur origins
PUBLICATION — Qvarnström, M., Wernström, J.V., Wawrzyniak, Z., Barbacka, M., Pacyna, G., Górecki, A., Ziaja, J., Jarzynka, A., Owocki, K., Sulej, T., Marynowski, L., Pieńkowski, G., Ahlberg, P.E., Niedźwiedzki, G. Digestive contents and food webs record the advent of dinosaur supremacy. Nature (2024), published: 27 November. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08265-4
Figure: artistic reconstruction of herbivorous, sauropodomorph dinosaurs in the Early Jurassic ecosystem of Soltykow (by Marcin Ambrozik).
Hundreds of fossils with direct evidence of foraging were used to compare the trophic dynamics of five vertebrate communities that record the process of dinosaurs gaining dominance on land. It has been shown that the changes in ecosystems at the turn of the Triassic and Jurassic in Poland were gradual, without any catastrophic events. They can explain global patterns of the transformation of terrestrial vertebrate fauna, shedding new light on the appearance of gigantism in dinosaurs and their dominance, which lasted for 150 million years until the end of the Cretaceous.