Re: dinosaurs did eat grass

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<These mineral deposits are just what phytoliths are. On the other hand,
grass-type phytoliths could be older than the grass shape of the whole plant.
Maybe what the titanosaurs ate was an unspectacular forest-floor herb that
happens to be the closest "known" relative of the grass-shaped grasses???>

  Well, the authors in the supplementary information of the paper have also
named several taxa for the phytoliths, and compared them with phytoliths from
other living Poacaea (grasses), allocating the recovered 'liths to several
extant groups of grasses. If the 'liths recovered belong to living types of
grasses, then grass lineages are old (which is expected) to the "family" level
which the authors referred them based on gross similarities. So it is likely
the grasses were no different than the range of variation known today
(including bamboo, typical lawn grass, oats and wheat, and even corn). Because
of this, lawn grasses and bamboo, which are derived forms, do not comprise the
bulk of poacaeans, the grasses then likely were atypical for what we today
think of as grass.

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


                
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