RE: dinosaurs did eat grass

[Ronald Orenstein <ron.orenstein@rogers.com>]

At 07:50 PM 17/11/2005, Jeff Hecht wrote:
> Obviously a big question is what were those grasses? All they have 
> is the phytoliths, which are definitely grassy but don't narrow down 
> to specific modern grass groups.

More specifically, if these were early forest grasses, they may have 
lacked the mineral deposits that make modern grasses is so hard on 
the dentition of mammalian grazers.  I presumed that there is no 
evidence of anything resembling hypsodont-type adaptations in 
dinosaurs?  Also, Cretaceous grasses may not have evolved the ability 
to form the kind of large single-species colonies we see in 
grasslands and in bamboo thickets.  In other words, there does not 
seem to be any evidence that, if there really were grasses in the 
Cretaceous, they posed a dietary challenge much different from that 
of any other forest plant of the time.


Ronald Orenstein
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