{"id":471765,"date":"2026-02-13T05:47:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/471765\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T05:47:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:47:12","slug":"canadian-fossil-reveals-one-of-the-first-plant-eating-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/471765\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian fossil reveals one of the first plant-eating animals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have unearthed in Canada\u2019s province of Nova Scotia the skull of a creature dating to about 307 million years ago that is one of the oldest-known plant-eating land vertebrates, representing a pivotal juncture in animal evolution.<\/p>\n<p>The creature, named Tyrannoroter heberti, possessed a somewhat triangle-shaped skull that facilitated large cheek muscles for eating tough plant material, with a mouth full of specialised teeth to crush, shred and grind vegetation.<\/p>\n<p>Tyrannoroter looked like a reptile but is not actually included in that class of animals, instead categorised as part of a group called microsaurs. While the researchers have discovered only its skull, they estimate based on the anatomy of related animals that Tyrannoroter was about 12 inches (30.5 cm) long, with a stocky build akin to today\u2019s blue-tongued skink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have unearthed in Canada\u2019s province of Nova Scotia the skull of a creature dating to about 307&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-471765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}