Researchers reconstructed the Triassic food web using nothing but scat.
Researchers used fossilized poos, known scientifically as coprolites, to learn more about how dinosaurs came to rule the Earth.
The analysis of hundreds of fossilized droppings from roughly 230 million years ago shows that dinosaurs persevered because they were not picky eaters. "We know a lot about the life and extinction of the dinosaurs, but not so much the rise of the dinosaurs," Qvarnström says.At the beginning of the Triassic period, dinosaurs were one of many lizards roaming the Earth."Most of the animals in the ecosystem were the various relatives of crocodiles," Qvarnström says.
Enter Qvarnström, who specializes in dinosaur droppings. A few years ago, he and his colleague Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki were analyzing a small number of the droppings, known as coprolites. They started noticing little traces of what the dinosaurs had eaten inside slices of the samples.A fish scale here, an insect there — each dropping was a tiny window into what was on the menu.
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