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.

[Minnesoootan]

Maybe they should check to see if sauropods had GIZZARDS!

[tophat9000]

Let see, scientists dated dinosaur fossils and scientists dated grass fossils and decided that two never meet ...but now they find grass in fossils dinosaur crap....so is it now legitimate to question scientists fossils dating and there theory's develop?

The red flag... fossils dating did not discover it's own error (and would still return the same incorrect dates)it was the "grass in the crap" that seems to shown it in error...so then it seems there are some errors in how fossils are dated and needs to be fixed and adjusted along with scientists theory's develop on these old assumptions or at least shouldn't we be open to there assumptions being question?

[Invincibly Ignorant]

did they purchase it by the ounce or kilo?

[sauropod]

We eat the grass for the roughage.

[r9etb]

The real question is: if grass was common enough to show up in these randomly selected pieces of dinosaur poop, where are the grass fossils in the same strata?

The fact is, however, that the researchers didn't really see grass; they saw microscopic particles of silica called phytoliths, which form inside plant cells in distinctive patterns that essentially act as a signature.

It's possible that they're wrong about the signatures.

[Jo Nuvark]

If the animal the dinosaur ate, just ate grass...
then wouldn't the poop have grass in it?

[MeanWestTexan]

Or maybe they ate something that just ate grass!

[GOPPachyderm]

Still laughing, but hopefully not pedantically.

[CommandoFrank]

Maybe they should check to see if sauropods had GIZZARDS!

The technical name for these stones is Gastrolith (sp?) and the prodominate dino in this area of Utah was the Alosaurus Rex, grand-daddy to T-Rex.

[editor-surveyor]

"We eat the grass for the roughage."

I guess you 'pods have no use for vitamin C? :o)

[Beaker]

Cats eat housplants to be mean.
And then they reguritate them to underscore it all. To make SURE that you know what they did.

[metmom]

Dino poop. LOL!

I can think of better ways to earn a living; and the point of all this is...? What redeeming value is ther in knowing how long grass has been on the planet? Sheesh. I'm more worried about paying my bills and making sure my kids don't grow up to be serial killers or pimps or drug dealers or something lovely like that. I think this falls into the "way too much time on their hands" category.

[SunkenCiv]

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Thanks flevit. Note: this topic is from 12/06/2005. Blast from the Past. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.