![\"Infernogallus](\"https:\/\/cdn.sci.news\/images\/enlarge14\/image_15128e-Infernogallus-jamesi.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nInfernogallus jamesi, a small oviraptorosaur that roamed our planet near the end of the Cretaceous period, may have fed on fleshy fruit. Image credit: Funston et al., 10.1038\/s41467-026-78343-w.<\/p>\n
Infernogallus jamesi lived in what is now the United States during the latest Cretaceous, 68 to 66 million years ago.<\/p>\n
The species belongs to Caenagnathidae<\/a>, a group of toothless, feathered oviraptorosaurs whose diets have long puzzled paleontologists.<\/p>\n \u201cCaenagnathids were a predominantly North American group of oviraptorosaurs distinguished by long, low edentulous mandibles that often bear complex ridges and grooves on their occlusal surfaces; elongate, gracile limbs; and highly pneumatized skeletons,\u201d said Dr. Gregory Funston, a researcher at Stony Brook University, the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues.<\/p>\n \u201cThis combination of features selects against their preservation in many Late Cretaceous depositional systems in the Western Interior Basin, resulting in a fossil record dominated by fragmentary, isolated bones.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough partial skeletons are known, none have yet enabled analysis of the mandibular adductor musculature, which would elucidate the functions of their unusual mandibles.\u201d<\/p>\n The holotype specimen of Infernogallus jamesi \u2014 a nearly complete, articulated skull with part of the skeleton \u2014 was collected in 2011 from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.<\/p>\n Additional material from Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota was also assigned to the species.<\/p>\n Bone sections showed the animal was at least 6 years old and fully grown, despite weighing an estimated 12 kg (26 pounds).<\/p>\n Using CT scans, the researchers reconstructed the jaw muscles and found that they pulled mostly front to back rather than up and down, which suggests a weak bite.<\/p>\n The jaw joint appears to have let the lower jaw slide forward and backward by up to about 15 mm.<\/p>\n The upper and lower jaws carried ridges and grooves that would have fit together as the jaw moved.<\/p>\n No stomach stones, which many plant-eating dinosaurs used to grind food, turned up in the specimen\u2019s body cavity.<\/p>\n Together with the weak bite, this points to a diet of soft food that still needed a lot of processing, rather than tough, fibrous plants.<\/p>\n