CT reconstructions of the skulls and jaws together with diagrams of where the jaw muscles attach in each dinosaur. The simplified family tree on the left shows how they are related to each other. (David Button)
CT reconstructions of the skulls and jaws together with diagrams of where the jaw muscles attach in each dinosaur. The simplified family tree on the left shows how they are related to each other. (David Button) Scientists discover differences in the way early herbivore dinosaurs ate their food Although most early dinosaurs were vegetarian, there were a surprising number of differences in the way that these animals tackled eating a plant-based diet, a new study reveals. Scientists used CT scans of dinosaur skulls to track the evolution of early dinosaur herbivores - reconstructing jaw muscles and measuring the animals' bite force to understand how dinosaur feeding evolved. Five skulls from the plant-eating group Ornithischia provided the key to unlocking their feeding habits: Heterodontosaurus, Lesothosaurus, Scelidosaurus, Hypsilophodon and Psittacosaurus - earliest representatives of what would become the major herbivore dinosaur groups. We discovered that each dinosaur tackled the problems posed by a plant-based diet by adopting very different eating techniques. Some compensated for low eating performance through their sheer size, whilst others developed bigger jaw muscles, increased jaw system efficiency, or combined these approaches.
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