Fossilized poo and vomit show how dinosaurs rose to rule Earth
Fossilized poo and vomit show how dinosaurs rose to rule Earth
Analysis of 200-million-year-old digested foods reveals how the animals became dominant.
Faeces and vomit fossils from dinosaurs reveal how the animals evolved to rule Earth. The study, which was published in Nature on 27 November, analysed hundreds of pieces of fossilized digestive material, called bromalites, to reconstruct what dinosaurs ate and how this changed1. The fossils reveal that the rise of the dinosaurs, over millions of years during the Triassic period, was influenced by factors including climate change and other species’ extinction.
“Our study shows that you can use pretty seemingly unremarkable fossils to get pretty remarkable results,” says co-author Martin Qvarnström, who studies early dinosaur evolution at Uppsala University in Sweden.
