In New York's Central Park, as many as 100 dinosaurs could have swarming, projected a paleontologist.James Farlow and his colleagues of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne have worked out the food needs and resources of a dinosaur's population preserved in a deposit called the Morrison formation, which stretches across Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
Dating from around 150 million years ago, near the end of the Jurassic period, the Morrison formation holds many of the long-necked giants called sauropods.The formation also holds fossil ferns and cycads, which permitted Farlow and colleagues to guess how much food was existing for Jurassic herbivores to eat.In one layer, they counted 135 sauropods specimens - including 31 Apatosaurus, the behemoth formerly known as Brontosaurus.
Calculating dinosaur appetites was faintly more complicated task because their metabolism is unknown.If they were warm-blooded like mammals, their requirements would be like to those of modern hippos and elephants - even though their larger sizes should have made them somewhat more energy-efficient.
But if they had slow, cold-blooded metabolisms like lizards, they could have survived on a much more meagre diet, and the same area could hold tens of the giants.
on the other hand, perhaps 100 cold-blooded sauropods could have crowded into this Jurassic park.The study has been available in Historical Biology.
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