Of course... It also matters how the sauropods were eating - if they swallowed the plants whole the silica would cause less wear.
Even more to the point: I am not aware of any studies confirming that Mesozoic era Equisetum contained silicates (and have even seen this question raised in a couple of works by paleobotanists). This is doubly true for other forms like the larger Neocalamites and elegant Schizoneura paradox which may be only very distantly related to Equisitum.
As for "grasses" there *were* plants with morphologically similar forms: For instance the gnetal Ephedra which today specialises in arid environments, has a clear fossil record establishing several species in the Cretaceous and was likely around much earlier.
It is interesting to note that the modern Yucca, despite being a flowering plant, is morphologically similar to a number of mesozoic Cycads and Cycadeoids and grows in fireprone habitats today in association with Ephedra (run a search).
Finally, our knowledge of paleobotany appears to suffer from a greater preservation bias than vertebrate paleontology and receives less attention (I recall Tiffney stating in the late 90s that almost no work on plant-dinosaur interactions had been done).
So, assuming it is laging by 40-60 years in some parts of the field (paleoecology matures later than taxonomy) and everything should be taken with caution (including the lake of angiosperm grasses in the Cretaceous).
S!
-Jonas Weselake-George
It may be hard to see, depending on the rate of tooth replacement to the rate of wear. Even then, you may need to see it in teeth still in the skull to know that you have front teeth. I don't know how easy it is to differentiate them in sauropods. We also need to think about what exactly the sauropods are eating, since horses are grazers, and grasslands didn't even exist for saurpods.
Brian
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 08:53:13 -0800 From: d_ohmes@yahoo.com Subject: Re: "Bonn Scientists Simulate Dinosaur Digestion in the Lab" To: dinosaur@usc.edu
This was mentioned in reference to the silicates in equisetum, the excessive wear they cause on teeth.
"However, many dinosaurs did not have any molars at all. They just pulled up their food and gulped it down." -- innovations report.
Wouldn't silicate wear still be present on the 'front' teeth of any horsetail eating sauropod? Having seen the effects of armadillo shell on dog teeth, I can state that wear occurs very quickly (relative to sauro life spans) in that case.
Don
----- Original Message ---- From: "mkirkaldy@aol.com" <mkirkaldy@aol.com> To: dinosaur@usc.edu Sent: Wednesday, February 6, 2008 10:45:46 AM Subject: "Bonn Scientists Simulate Dinosaur Digestion in the Lab"
"Bonn Scientists Simulate Dinosaur Digestion in the Lab" 06.02.2008 http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/biowissenschaften_chemie/bericht-102776.html "Scientists from the University of Bonn are researching which plants giant dinosaurs could have lived off more than 100 million years ago. They want to find out how the dinosaurs were able to become as large as they did. In actual fact such gigantic animals should not have existed. The results of the research have now been published in the journal 'Proceedings of the Royal Society B'."
Mary
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