Scientists from Portland State University (PSU) have discovered that giant dinosaur remains may have been an important food source for Jurassic predators. Simulations showed that evolutionary adaptations to scavenging may have contributed significantly to the species’ success. The research was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Carnivorous dinosaurs lived in ecosystems rich in both live prey and carrion. Biologists have suggested that giant carcasses such as those of sauropod dinosaurs could have been the main food source for large predators. To test this hypothesis, researchers created a model; Simplified virtual simulation of a dinosaur ecosystem. It was constructed using data from the ancient fauna of the Jurassic Morrison Formation, which included the large predator Allosaurus and its giant sauropod prey.
In the model, carnivores (allosaurs) were given traits that would improve their hunting or scavenging abilities. It turns out that when the amount of large carrion is greater, eating it is more profitable than hunting. This suggests that predators in such ecosystems may have evolved special features to better detect and consume carcasses.
“Even if predators had prey to hunt, natural selection pressures favored scavengers, while predators had lower fitness. We think Allosaurus probably waited until a group of sauropods had a dry season, fed on their carcasses, stored fat in their tails, and then waited until the next season to repeat the process. “This makes sense because a single sauropod carcass contained enough calories to support about 25 allosaurs for weeks or even months, and sauropods were generally the most abundant dinosaurs in the environment,” the scientists explained.
The authors emphasize that the model is a simplified abstraction of a complex system. Therefore, the results may have been different if more variables, such as additional dinosaur species, were included. However, this approach may improve understanding of how carrion availability may influence the evolution of predators.
Paleontologists before extracted Genome recovered from the fossilized feces of a woolly rhinoceros.