Old Crocs; What Ate Dinosaurs?  

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[s.n]

Jenis: Article from Bulletin/Magazine
Dalam koleksi: The Economist (http://search.proquest.com/) vol. 401 no. 8759 (Nov. 2011), page 87-88.
Topik: Archaeology; Dinosaurs; Research
Fulltext: Old Crocs.pdf (41.91KB)

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Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE29.69 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

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At this year's meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology, held in Las Vegas, some of the speakers asked whether the top predators of the Mesozoic era really were all dinosaurs. Their conclusion was "no". Studies are revealing that dinosaurs did not have it all their own way in the ecosystems of the Mesozoic--as Stephanie Drumheller of the University of Iowa and Clint Boyd of the University of Texas at Austin explained to the meeting. When Ms Drumheller and Mr Boyd examined the bones of juvenile upper-Cretaceous ornithopods dug up in Utah they saw marks on one skeleton that looked suspiciously like those modern crocodiles inflict when biting and tearing at their prey. On examining these marks more closely, they found a crocodilian tooth stuck in one of them. It was not a large tooth. Its size suggests the animal which made it was no more than a metre and a half (about 5 feet) long. Such a predator would have been unable to take on an adult ornithopod. Nevertheless, this tooth is the first unarguable proof that crocodilians did indeed snack on dinosaurs. Moreover, it helps to confirm suspicions that the other crocodile-bite-like marks that Ms Drumheller and Mr Boyd have discovered really are what they look like. By combining that with an analysis of the whole site, the two researchers argue that what they have discovered is a dinosaur nesting ground that was being raided by crocodilians.

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