![\"Ecosystem](\"https:\/\/cdn.sci.news\/images\/enlarge13\/image_14522e-Morrison-Formation.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nEcosystem reconstruction of the Late Jurassic Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry around 150 million years ago in Colorado, the United States. Image credit: Sergey Krasovskiy \/ Pedro Salas.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdult sauropods such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus were longer than a blue whale,\u201d said University College London\u2019s Dr. Cassius Morrison.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they walked the Earth would shake. Their eggs, though, were just a foot wide and once hatched their offspring would take many years to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSize alone would make it difficult for sauropods to look after their eggs without destroying them, and evidence suggests that, much like baby turtles today, young sauropods were not looked after by their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the study, Dr. Morrison and colleagues analyzed fossils discovered in the 150-million-year-old Morrison Formation<\/a> to map out a food web of the time.<\/p>\n The specimens came from a single quarry, the Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry, where a remarkably rich collection of dinosaur fossils was deposited across a time span of up to 10,000 or so years, including at least six species of sauropods such as a Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, and Apatosaurus.<\/p>\n To determine who ate what, the paleontologists used existing data such as dinosaur size, wear and tear on their teeth, the abundance of certain isotopes in the remains, and in some cases the fossilized contents of their stomach revealing their last meal.<\/p>\n They then mapped out the food web of the time \u2014 i.e. all the possible links between dinosaurs, other animals and plants \u2014 at a higher resolution than has previously been carried out for dinosaurs, with the help of software typically used for modern ecosystems.<\/p>\n The researchers concluded that sauropods had a key role in this ecosystem, with substantially more links to plants and animals than the other main group of vegetarian dinosaurs, the ornithischians (plant-eaters such as the armored Stegosaurus who were more dangerous prey).<\/p>\n \u201cSauropods had a dramatic impact on their ecosystem,\u201d Dr. Morrison said.<\/p>\n \u201cOur study allows us to measure and quantify the role they had for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cReconstructing food webs means we can more easily compare dinosaur ecosystems across different periods.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt helps us to understand evolutionary pressures and why dinosaurs might have evolved in the way they did.\u201d<\/p>\n The scientists noted that 70 million years later, during the time of Tyrannosaurus rex, fewer sauropods providing easy prey may have helped trigger the evolutionary adaptations (stronger bite force, larger size, better vision) allowing Tyrannosaurus rex to hunt larger, more dangerous animals, such as a Triceratops, which were armed with three large horns.<\/p>\n \u201cThe apex predators of the Late Jurassic, such as Allosaurus or Torvosaurus, may have had an easier time acquiring food compared to Tyrannosaurus rex millions of years later,\u201d said Dr. William Hart, a paleontologist at Hofstra University.<\/p>\n \u201cSome Allosaurus fossils show signs of quite horrific injuries \u2014 for instance caused by the spiked tail of a Stegosaurus \u2014 that had healed and some which hadn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut an abundance of easy prey in the form of young sauropods may have allowed injured allosaurs to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n The team\u2019s findings<\/a> will be published in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin<\/a>.<\/p>\n _____<\/p>\n Cassius Morrison et al. 2026. \u201cHere, size is no accident\u201d: a novel food web analysis of the Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry and ecological impact of Morrison Formation sauropod fauna. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research led by University College London paleontologists shows that newly-hatched long-necked giants were prey for multiple carnivores…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64265,868,10336,139271,139272,139273,4650,85,46,32692,68834,2819,53051,53052,141,40882,1032],"class_list":{"0":"post-266177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-carnivory","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-dinosaur","11":"tag-dry-mesa-dinosaur-quarry","12":"tag-food-chain","13":"tag-food-web","14":"tag-fossil","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-jurassic","18":"tag-morrison-formation","19":"tag-north-america","20":"tag-sauropod","21":"tag-sauropoda","22":"tag-science","23":"tag-theropod","24":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}