Flexible molars made chewing champions out of duck-billed dinosaurs
Tiny scratches in the fossilized teeth of Edmontosaurus suggest these large herbivores may have had an unusual way of chewing
Duck-billed dinosaurs may have been the sheep of their ecosystems, instead of the deer.
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Patterns of tiny scratches in the fossilized teeth of Edmontosaurus, a type of hadrosaur, suggest the dinos had more complex jaw movements than previously thought, and may have eaten grass-like plants instead of trees, researchers report online June 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Understanding how hadrosaurs chewed their food and what they ate could help scientists better understand how these creatures, the dominant plant-eating vertebrates of the Late Cretaceous period some 75 million to 65 million years ago, fit into their ecosystem, the study suggests.