Re: Sneak Peak at Yale Torosaurus Sculpture

[Dino Guy Ralph <ralph.miller@alumni.usc.edu>]

Even if ceratopsians sported mere sheets of skin (something like the 
hatchling hornbills, but perhaps a good deal larger), such features would 
help retain orally processed food.  If not "cheeks" what should we call this 
food retaining skin?

Jaime Headden writes:
It  would help to know what ceratopsians ate....


Could be cycads.  See:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_16_160/ai_80680529

Even flossing wouldn't have helped - Paleontology - particles could give 
clues about dinosaur diet - Brief Article
Science News,  Oct 20, 2001

Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again with 
Furl.net. It's free! Save it.
Small particles trapped in minuscule cracks or pits in the fossilized teeth 
of some plant-eating dinosaurs could give scientists a way to identify what 
types of greenery the ancient herbivores munched.

Many types of plants produce phytoliths--literally, plant stones--in their 
stems and leaves by converting the silica dissolved in groundwater into a 
crystalline form similar to opals. These tiny parcels of grit come in a wide 
variety of shapes and sizes, and they have a microscopic structure different 
from that in silica crystals formed by geologic processes, says David A. 
Krauss, a paleobiologist at Boston College.

Because they're harder than tooth enamel, phytoliths scratch tooth surfaces 
and can become embedded in small cracks there. Krauss examined a collection 
of teeth from hadrosaurs and ceratopsians--two different groups of 
plant-eating dinosaurs--unearthed in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, 
Canada. He found that about 25 percent of these teeth had phytoliths trapped 
in the chewing surfaces.

Different types of plants produce phytoliths that look alike, but some 
groups of species generate distinct crystal forms. Krauss analyzed the 
phytoliths produced by living relatives of the ancient plants found in the 
fossil layers holding the dinosaurs.

The sizes and shapes of crystals from the fossil teeth suggest that the 
ceratopsian dinosaurs, relatives of Triceratops, may have eaten a high 
proportion of tough-leafed cycads, whereas the hadrosaurs, or duck-billed 
dinosaurs, probably favored ferns. --S.P.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Science Service, Inc.


The talk was presented at the 2001 SVP meeting in Bozeman, Montana, so you 
should be able to find it in the abstracts volume.



--------
"Dino Guy" Ralph W. Miller III
Docent at the California Academy of Sciences
proud member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 
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