Researchers have deciphered the ancient obscurity about how abundant genus of large, plant-eating dinosaurs could co-exist productively over biological time. Dr Jordan Mallon, a post-doctoral member at the Canadian Museum of Nature considered and analyzed distinctiveness of almost 100 dinosaur skulls improved from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, Canada.
Mallon's consequences specify that these mega herbivores had conflicting skull uniqueness that would have allowed them to deliberate in eating different types of foliage. The results, available in the journal PLOS ONE, sustain an idea known as niche partitioning, which dates to the 19th-century studies of Charles Darwin and came into its own in the 1950s with the expansion of the science of ecology.
The Dinosaur Park Formation is between 76.5 and 75 million years old and is known for its rich thoughtfulness of dinosaur leftovers. The rock unit has yielded nearly 20 species of mega herbivores from the Late Cretaceous period. Of these, six species would have coexisted at any one time, counting two types of ankylosaurs, two types of hadrosaurs, and two types of ceratopsids.
"Today's mega herbivore communities are not nearly as dissimilar as those from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, and most other fossil communities also soft by association. So the question is: how does a situation sustain so many of these large herbivores at once?" Mallon said. Mallon tested two opposing hypotheses. The first is that accessibility of food was not a warning factor in genus endurance. Plants may have been either super-abundant, so the mega herbivores did not have to struggle for food, or the dinosaurs' metabolisms were comparatively low, so the situation could support more species relative to a fauna comprised wholly of high-metabolic animals. The second hypothesis is that the obtainable food resources were restraining and that niche partitioning came into play; in other words, there weren't that many plants to go around so that the species had to share obtainable food sources by specializing on different types of vegetation."If niche partitioning was in effect, then you would expect to see various dietary adaptations among the contemporaneous dinosaur species," said Mallon. These differences, for example, would reflect whether a dinosaur was adapted to feeding on soft or hard plant tissues.
Mallon's consequences specify that these mega herbivores had conflicting skull uniqueness that would have allowed them to deliberate in eating different types of foliage. The results, available in the journal PLOS ONE, sustain an idea known as niche partitioning, which dates to the 19th-century studies of Charles Darwin and came into its own in the 1950s with the expansion of the science of ecology.
The Dinosaur Park Formation is between 76.5 and 75 million years old and is known for its rich thoughtfulness of dinosaur leftovers. The rock unit has yielded nearly 20 species of mega herbivores from the Late Cretaceous period. Of these, six species would have coexisted at any one time, counting two types of ankylosaurs, two types of hadrosaurs, and two types of ceratopsids.
"Today's mega herbivore communities are not nearly as dissimilar as those from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, and most other fossil communities also soft by association. So the question is: how does a situation sustain so many of these large herbivores at once?" Mallon said. Mallon tested two opposing hypotheses. The first is that accessibility of food was not a warning factor in genus endurance. Plants may have been either super-abundant, so the mega herbivores did not have to struggle for food, or the dinosaurs' metabolisms were comparatively low, so the situation could support more species relative to a fauna comprised wholly of high-metabolic animals. The second hypothesis is that the obtainable food resources were restraining and that niche partitioning came into play; in other words, there weren't that many plants to go around so that the species had to share obtainable food sources by specializing on different types of vegetation."If niche partitioning was in effect, then you would expect to see various dietary adaptations among the contemporaneous dinosaur species," said Mallon. These differences, for example, would reflect whether a dinosaur was adapted to feeding on soft or hard plant tissues.
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