Dinosaurs are more caloric than humans!

Vegetables eaten by herbivorous dinosaurs 150 million years ago had nutritional value greater than that consumed by humans in the polluted environment of the 21st century. In a recent study, researchers measured the nutritional value of the herbivorous dinosaur diet by growing their food under atmospheric conditions similar to those of many years ago. Previously, researchers believed that plants grown in an atmosphere with high levels of carbon dioxide had low nutritional value.

But a new experimental approach led by Fiona Gill at the University of Leeds has shown that this is not necessarily true. The team has grown food plants of dinosaurs, such as horsetail and ginkgo, under high levels of carbon dioxide mimicking atmospheric conditions similar to those of the sauropod dinosaurs, the largest animals that have ever roamed the Earth. at this moment. An artificial fermentation system was used to simulate the digestion of plant leaves in the sauropod stomachs, allowing researchers to determine the nutritional value of the leaves.

The results showed that many plants had levels of energy and nutrients believed. This suggests that megaherbivores would have needed to eat much less per day and the ecosystem could have supported a significantly higher dinosaur population density, up to 20 percent more than previously estimated. "The climate was very different in the Mesozoic era – when the huge brachiosaur and diplodocus were living – with probably higher carbon dioxide levels. It was assumed that plants grow faster and / or more "Our results show that this is not the case for all plant species," Gill said.

"The large size of sauropods at this time suggests that they needed large amounts of energy to support them.Higher levels of nutrients and energy mean that less food needs to be consumed to provide enough food for the food to be eaten. energy, which in turn can affect the size and density of the population, "he added.

The research did not give a complete picture of the dinosaur diet nor did it cover the magnitude of the plants that existed at the time, but a com a clearer grasp of how dinosaurs ate scientists to understand how they actually survived

. What is interesting in our approach to plant growth under prehistoric atmospheric conditions is that it can be used to simulate other ecosystems and diets of other ancient megaherbivores, such as Miocene mammals – the ancestors of many modern mammals. The study appears in the journal Paleontology.