Surprising Findings: New Analysis Reveals the Secrets of Dinosaur Diets

Lythronax Fossil

This Lythronax lived in North America in the late Cretaceous period. These tyrannosaurids are estimated to have weighed up to 2.5 tons. Credit: 2022 D.E. Winkler

New study of T. rex and other dinosaur teeth provides insights into their dietary habits.

Scratches on dinosaur teeth could uncover their true diet. Researchers have employed dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) for the first time to deduce the feeding habits of large theropods, such as Allosaurus and T. rex. By capturing 3D images of individual teeth and examining the pattern of scratches, scientists can deduce which dinosaurs likely consumed hard bone and which may have preferred softer foods and prey.

This method opens up a new avenue for paleontological research, allowing for a greater understanding not only of dinosaurs but also of the ecosystems and communities in which they existed.

From Fantasia to Jurassic Park, the T. rex is seen as a terrifying apex predator that would chase down its prey and crunch on it whole. But how much did this iconic dinosaur actually chow down on bones? And what about other predatory dinosaurs that existed long before it?

Dmta Image of an Adult Tyrannosaurid Tooth

A 100 micrometer-by-100 micrometer (μm) image of the tip of this tooth shows the tiny scratches which were analyzed for complexity and depth of wear features. Credit: 2022 Winkler et al.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo, in collaboration with teams from the University of Mainz and the University of Hamburg in Germany, have used dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA), a scanning technique to examine topographical dental wear and tear in microscopic detail, on individual dinosaur teeth from more than 100 million years ago to better understand what they may have eaten.

“We wanted to test if we could use DMTA to find evidence of different feeding behaviors in tyrannosaurids (from the Cretaceous period, 145 million to 66 million years ago) compared to the older Allosaurus (from the Jurassic period, 201 million to 145 million years ago), which are both types of theropods,” explained postdoctoral fellow Daniela Winkler from the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences. “From other research, we already knew that tyrannosaurids can crack and feed on bones (from studies of their feces and bite marks on the bone). But allosaurs are much older and there is not so much information about them.”

DMTA has mainly been used to study mammal teeth, so this is the first time it was used to study theropods. The same research team from the University of Tokyo also recently pioneered a study on DMTA in Japanese sauropod dinosaurs, famous for their long necks and tails. A high-resolution 3D image was taken of the tooth surface at a very small scale of 100 micrometers (one-tenth of a millimeter) by 100 micrometers in size.

Adult Tyrannosaurid Teeth

Blue silicon was carefully excreted from a tube onto the teeth and left to dry for a few minutes to create near-perfect replicas, which were removed and taken from the museum in the U.S. city of Salt Lake City, Utah, to Japan for further study. Credit: 2022 D. E. Winkler

Up to 50 sets of surface texture parameters were then used to analyze the image, for example, the roughness, depth, and complexity of wear marks. If the complexity was high, i.e., there were different-sized marks that overlaid each other, this was associated with hard object feeding, such as on bone. However, if the complexity was low, i.e., the marks were more arranged, of a similar size, and not overlapping, this was associated with soft object feeding, like meat.

In total, the team studied 48 teeth, 34 from theropod dinosaurs and 14 from crocodilians (modern crocodiles and alligators), which were used as a comparison. The team was able to study original fossilized teeth and take high-resolution silicon molds, thanks to loans provided by natural history museums in Canada, the U.S., Argentina, and Europe.

“We actually started dental microwear research of dinosaurs in 2010,” said Lecturer Mugino Kubo from the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences. “My husband, Dr. Tai Kubo, and I had started collecting dental molds of dinosaurs and their contemporaries in North and South Americas, Europe, and of course Asia. Since Daniela joined my lab, we utilized these molds to make a broader comparison among carnivorous dinosaurs.”

“It was especially challenging to carry out this research during the pandemic,” said Winkler “as we rely on being able to gather samples from international institutions. The sample size might not be so large this time, but it is a starting point.”

Winkler says what they found surprising was that they didn’t find evidence of much bone-crushing behavior in either Allosaurus or tyrannosaurids, even though they know that tyrannosaurids ate the bone. There may be several reasons for this unexpected outcome. It could be that although Tyrannosaurus was able to eat bone, it was less commonly done than previously thought. Also, the team had to use well-preserved teeth, so it might be those extremely damaged teeth that were excluded from this study were in such a condition because those animals fed more on bone.

Something the team did find with both the dinosaurs and crocodilians was a noticeable difference between juveniles and adults. “We studied two juvenile dinosaur specimens (one Allosaurus and one tyrannosaurid) and what we found was a very different feeding niche and behavior for both compared to the adults. We found that there was more wear to juvenile teeth, which might mean that they had to more frequently feed on carcasses because they were eating leftovers,” explained Winkler. “We were also able to detect different feeding behavior in juvenile crocodilians; however, this time it was the opposite. Juvenile crocodilians had less wear on their teeth from eating softer foods, perhaps like insects, while adults had more dental wear from eating harder foods, like larger vertebrates.”

Winkler says that the next step with dinosaurs will probably be to look in more detail at the long-necked sauropods, which the team has also been studying. But for now, she is experimenting with something much, much smaller: crickets. The insects’ mouths may be tiny and don’t have any teeth, but the researchers want to see if they can still find evidence of mouth wear using the same technique.

“From what we learn using DMTA, we can possibly reconstruct extinct animals’ diets, and from this make inferences about extinct ecosystems, paleoecology and paleoclimate, and how it differs from today,” said Winkler. “But this research is also about curiosity. We want to form a clearer image of what dinosaurs were really like and how they lived all those millions of years ago.”

Reference: “First application of dental microwear texture analysis to infer theropod feeding ecology” by Daniela E. Winkler, Tai Kubo, Mugino O. Kubo, Thomas M. Kaiser and Thomas Tütken, 9 December 2022, Palaeontology.
DOI: 10.1111/pala.12632

The study was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

4 Comments on "Surprising Findings: New Analysis Reveals the Secrets of Dinosaur Diets"

  1. Modern crocodilian and t.rex and allosaur are tyrannosaur ..t.rex fully land predator Nile crocodile is semi aquatic predator allosaur hoof animal so it’s a land predator .dwarf caiman and dwarf crocodile are land crocodile they are better for the test one of dwarf caiman has fuse nasal a land feature t.rex and spinosaurus allso has fuse nasal . Juvenile leg of t.rex gator allosaurus all predator dinosaur are the same very different from adult that why they are all are dinosaur I learn this early.I do not know if they use bird leg dinosaur for the test some gator type mesoeucrocodylia allso has bird leg allso fossil gator type mesoeucrocodylia allso has fuse nasal.dwarf caiman lack serrated teeth but dwarf crocodile is a crocodile so it should have serrated teeth.modern crocodilian teeth are more simular to human to stop wear most at the tip because it’s design to crush bone .serrated ziphodont teeth are not design to crush bone but seem to happen a lot in mesoeucrocodylia in evolution .t.rex is ziphodont predator so result is not shocking .serrated teeth is design to cut flesh not bone.one dwarf caiman has real ziphodont teeth because it’s alligator it has no serration so its a fake ziphodont .and modern crocodilian has sphenoid bone like mammal more skull fusion stronger the bite force the sphenoid is the pterygoid that why it has a new name the reptile and birds has parasphenoid that there pterygoid .the gator is high up animal so he has a sphenoid. The dinosaur juvenile leg is a predator feature that what report said.

  2. Archaeopteryx bird there choana is like reptile like dinosaur the choana is enclose in maxillae in mammal it is at the back of the palatine in modern bird it’s enclose in the palatine like early advance mesoeucrocodylia in primitive mesoeucrocodylia it’s in maxillae like dinosaur in eusuchian mesoeucrocodylia today modern crocodilian it’s in pterygoid in early eusuchian susisuchidae some of them have on the palatine and the pterygoid and won on the pterygoid is not at the right place it’s transition animal.the archaeopteryx bird dromaeosauridae bird the early birds like ichthyornis the palatine is fuse to pterygoid this feature is not a reptile feature in today birds juvenile have this feature it change when they are adult this clearly show birds are not dinosaur the choana push back I herd this feature is to help in breathing the choana or fenestra the nose bring air in to the lungs it’s 2 hole the skull nose enter is one hole in mammal and Nile crocodile.in today birds palatine and pterygoid are not fuse there is joint there.in eusuchian i guest that what they mean the palate is fuse to the braincase.

  3. segredo de cleópatra despertando seu poder | April 19, 2023 at 6:02 pm | Reply

    Excellent article! Congratulations on the information. 74370524

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