Dinosaur poop shows grass is older than it seems

seattlepi.com ^ | Friday, November 18, 2005 | By LAURAN NEERGAARD

[flevit]

It's a big surprise for scientists, who had never really looked for evidence of grass in dinosaur diets before. After all, grass fossils aside, those sauropods -- the behemoths with the long necks and tails and small heads -- didn't have the special kind of teeth needed to grind up abrasive blades.

"Most people would not have fathomed that they would eat grasses," noted lead researcher Caroline Stromberg of the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

[flevit]

ping?

[atomicpossum]

A vegan diet, and yet-- they're still dead.

[saveliberty]

The truth is stranger than fiction ping

[YouPosting2Me]

Something stinks in this story.

[Bahbah]

Somebody needs to ping sauropod to this story.

[Pessimist]

So grass is literally older than dinosaur sh!t?

[layman]

the scientific term is coprolites

Well, they might have a scientific term for it, but I bet that when they're in their secret meetings behind closed doors when they think no one can hear them, they call it poop.

[Sacajaweau]

Dragon breath...that's what happens when you smoke grass~!! NOW I understand those dragon pictures!!!

[ClearCase_guy]

Scientists like to make conjectures based on minimal fossil finds. We recently had a thread on dinosaur footprints. From the footprints, scientists knew the diet of the beast, the height of the beast, and the a few other things.

Sometimes that strikes me as over-reaching. The piece that seems most straight-forward is diet. Based on tooth shape, we should know something about what they ate. Then this comes along. Teeth indicate that they would not eat grass, but scat says they did.

Scientists know less than they think.

[DustyMoment]

Whew!! What a relief. I have sweating out the age of grass for . . . . well, actually, this isn't a topic that is very high on my list of important things.

In fact, it doesn't even register.

[CommandoFrank]

Stromberg and paleobotanists from India analyzed sauropod dung and found grasses...

Corn does the same thing to me.

[Gorzaloon]

Sometimes that strikes me as over-reaching. The piece that seems most straight-forward is diet. Based on tooth shape, we should know something about what they ate. Then this comes along. Teeth indicate that they would not eat grass, but scat says they did.

Cats and dogs, both obligate carnivores, sometimes eat grass, for whatever reason.

Cats eat housplants to be mean.

We grew catnip, they ignored it and ate everything else.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I remember reading in Scientic American back when it was still interesting to read that the comparative ratio of carnivores to herbivores among dinosaurs indicated that they were probably cold blooded. Warm blooded predators need a larger mass of vegans per pound of meat eater.

[Gorzaloon]

Sometimes that strikes me as over-reaching. The piece that seems most straight-forward is diet. Based on tooth shape, we should know something about what they ate. Then this comes along. Teeth indicate that they would not eat grass, but scat says they did.

Cats and dogs, both obligate carnivores, sometimes eat grass, for whatever reason.

Cats eat housplants to be mean.

We grew catnip, they ignored it and ate everything else.

[CommandoFrank]

Teeth indicate that they would not eat grass, but scat says they did.

I've got plenty of stones that came out of dino stomachs that were used to grind food. Like birds, they had rocks do some of the digesetive work.

These stones look like they were tumbled round and polished. They are very easy to find in Utah.

[Lawgvr1955]

Scientists like to make conjectures based on minimal fossil finds. We recently had a thread on dinosaur footprints. From the footprints, scientists knew the diet of the beast, the height of the beast, and the a few other things.

Sounds like the crime lab tech on Hawaii Five-O. That guy could reconstruct the whole crime from a grain of sand.

[TX Bluebonnet]

Scientists know less than they think.

Don't tell them that! Scientists (and doctors) pretend to be impartial, but most are very defensive of their postulations and fall in love with their favorite theories. But they'll be the first to criticize religion for those very things.

[Dallas59]

didn't have the special kind of teeth needed to grind up abrasive blades.

Why do dogs eat grass?

[MonroeDNA]

Were there bells in the poop, and did it smell like pepper spray?