TLS06E03 Dinosaur Diets

Terrible Lizards

At various times in previous episodes we have talked about what various dinosaurs ate and bits of data about diet, but this time we’re going to take a more systematic look at how palaeontologists work out the diet of ancient animals. We go through the obvious ones like sharp teeth and finding bits of stuff inside them to microscopic traces of damage on the enamel, the structure of teeth and elemental isotopes that linger for a hundred million years. All good clean fun (unless you are the dinosaur being shredded by a hungry carcharodontosaur).

We don't have a guest this week - so there is no better time to find @Iszi_lawrence and @Dave_hone on social media (use #terriblelizards) and stalk us. Also don't forget to check out our Patreon many thanks!

Links:

An old blogpost by Dr John Whitlock on wear marks on teeth and how that can be used to work out the diet of sauropods: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/guest-post-grazing-giants-sauropod-feeding/

A post about Dave’s paper describing a Velociraptor that ate (part of) a large pterosaur: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/velociraptor-scavenging-azhdarchid/