When dinosaurs scampered onto the scene 230 million years ago, these “terrible lizards” were prehistoric pipsqueaks among a slew of bigger reptiles brimming with teeth and bolstered with armor. But 30 million years later, many of these older reptiles were gone, and dinosaurs reigned supreme.
Determining how dinosaurs achieved worldwide domination has been difficult because of a scarcity of well-preserved early dinosaur skeletons. So a team of researchers recently explored another aspect of the fossil record: fossilized feces and vomit, known as bromalites. In a new study, the scientists used these materials to re-create how early dinosaurs fit into food webs across 30 million years in a region that is today part of Poland.
The most famous bromalites are fossilized feces, also known as coprolites. But bromalites also preserve digestive byproducts such as regurgitations and gut contents that help researchers pinpoint who was eating whom in ancient ecosystems.
The new study examined more than 500 bromalite specimens that collectively weighed more than 220 pounds. Several bromalites revealed that the earliest dinosaurs were omnivores that ate insects. Slightly more recent dinosaur dung belonged to early carnivores and small herbivores. Even younger bromalites were linked to the emergence of the first large herbivorous dinosaurs, sauropodomorphs. The early Jurassic deposits yielded the bromalites of large predatory dinosaurs that had evolved to hunt large herbivores. — JACK TAMISIEA / NYT
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