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Washington DC, July 15: Vegetables eaten by herbivorous dinosaurs 150 million years ago had a higher nutritional value than that consumed by humans in the polluted environment of the 21st century.
In a recent study, researchers measured nutritional value of the diet of herbivorous dinosaurs by growing their food under atmospheric conditions similar to those of many years ago.
Previously, researchers believed that plants grown in an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide had low nutritional value.
An experimental approach led by Fiona Gill at the University of Leeds has shown that this is not necessarily true.
The team cultivated dinosaur food plants, such as horsetail and ginkgo, under high levels of carbon dioxide mimicking the sauropod dinosaurs. , the biggest animals ever roam the Earth at that time.
An artificial fermentation system was used to simulate the digestion of the plant. The results showed that many plants had significantly higher energy and nutrient levels than previously thought.
This suggests that megaherbivores would have It was necessary to eat much less per day and the ecosystem could have supported a significantly higher dinosaur population density, up to 20% more than what had previously estimated.
"The climate was very different in the Mesozoic era, with diplodocus having lived – with probably much higher carbon dioxide levels.It was badumed that when plants grow faster and / or faster under With higher CO2 levels, their nutritional value is decreasing, and our results show that this is not the case for all plant species, "explains Gill.
" The large size of the sauropods at that time suggests that they need huge amounts of energy to support them.When the available food source has higher nutrient and energy levels, it means less food to consume for provide enough energy, which can affect the size and density of the population, "he adds
. from the dinosaur diet or cover the width of the plants that existed at that time but a better understanding the way the dinosaurs ate helped scientists understand how they survived. The "exciting thing about our approach to growing plants in prehistoric atmospheric conditions is that it can be used to simulate other ecosystems and diets of other ancient megaherbivores, such as the Miocene mammals – the ancestors of many modern mammals, "he said further.
The study appears in the journal Paleontology.
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