Teeth Show Dinosaurs May Have Moved Seasonally

What a giant plant-munching dinosaurs are doing when they could not find enough to eat the American West? They hit the road.

The analysis of fossil teeth, long neck dinosaurs called sauropods - the largest country beings - my Road Trip Sate of gargantuan appetites.

Camarasaurus - vegetarian sauropods were about 60 feet long and weighed 25 tonnes - were taken to graze continuously to maintain its size, and some researchers suspect that would have had to emigrate in search of enough food and water, said geologist Henry Fricke, University of Colorado. But he had no proof.

For the new study published in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed 32 of the Fricke Camarasaurus teeth collected in Wyoming and Utah. The large herbivores roamed a semi-arid western basin during the late Jurassic period about 150 million years.

Scientists can get a glimpse of the water source of the dinosaurs by comparing the oxygen stored in the enamel of the teeth with that found in ancient sediments. Chemical analysis revealed differences in the teeth and pelvis when the dinosaurs were buried, which means you must have wandered hundreds of miles of flood plains to the mountains.

Scientists have found that the isotope ratios of oxygen-16, located in the highlands, and oxygen-18 a little heavier, the plain, varied from layer to layer in the enamel of the teeth, This indicates that the source of water varies at different times of the teeth - and dinosaur - growth.

Fricke said, the movement seems to be tied to the seasons. Sauropods left the pool during the summer and has come up in winter.

Luis Chiappe, director of the Institute of dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, said the results, although interesting, can not be that dinosaurs migrated regularly.

"It does not necessarily mean they moved in flocks of giant on Discovery Channel or NatGeo shows migrating wildebeest or caribou herds," he said.

But Fricke said that migration makes sense, "Camarasaurus had to get her up quickly assuming we were constantly eating, will probably move to some extent, continue to receive the trees still had leaves on them ..."



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