Sauropod Size: Plant Food Argument About Dinosaurs Gets Renewed
Wednesday, December 12, 2012 - 05:00
in Paleontology & Archaeology
It's not disputed that long necked sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth, but why they got so large is a debate. Was it the nature of the food they ate? While that was considered, skepticism remained. But a group of researchers now argues that the plant ecologists from South Africa who suggested a plant food cause for big dinosaurs were onto something; but scientists confused two different issues in thinking about this problem; namely how much energy is in the plant with how much nitrogen is in the plant – the South African ideas were based on nitrogen content not the total energy in the plant food. Drs. David Wilkinson and Graeme Ruxton of Liverpool John Moores University read more